


Lumberjack Christmas

by svcre



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas, Fix-It, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Gabriel/Sam Winchester, Unrequited Love, the characters are the same age as in the finale but this is still an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28235790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svcre/pseuds/svcre
Summary: Castiel has spent half his life pining for Dean Winchester, and this Christmas is when he's finally going to overcome his fear and embarrassment and confess his true feelings. That is, if his friends' efforts to finally have a "real Christmas" don't kill him first...
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50





	1. December 22nd

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the lovely Sufjan Stevens song "Lumberjack Christmas".
> 
> I'm planning to post a chapter every day until Christmas!

Everything about it was embarrassing -- Castiel knew that. They were too old for this type of thing, much too old, and he’d had plenty of opportunities over the years to just do it, to bite the bullet and confess, and he hadn’t. Dean hadn’t either, which was a detail Castiel considered notable.

“So, that probably means Dean doesn’t feel the same way,” he had argued to Gabriel a few days prior, when he’d first come up with The Plan. 

“No, you dolt, it means that he’s even more of a coward than you are,” Gabriel had answered without looking up from his phone, as if it was so obvious that he hadn't even needed to think about it for a second. 

“Dean’s no coward,” Castiel muttered. 

“About most things, no,” Gabriel said. “About this stuff, _yes_.” 

Castiel considered that, and had to admit Gabriel might be a little bit right. Dean did actively avoid ‘chick flick moments’ (and always called them that, no matter how many times Castiel tried to convince him that it was hypocritical for Dr. Sexy’s biggest fan to be condescending about films intended for a female audience), and hadn’t been in a serious relationship in years. When had he ever seen Dean make a first move on a man, anyways? With women he was very comfortable being flirtatious enough to make everyone else in the room mildly nauseous, but with men, he tended to, well… choke. 

Clearly seeing that Castiel might agree with him, Gabriel chuckled and gave him a reassuring pat of the shoulder. “You’ll have to make the move here, buddy, unless you’d like to be single and pining away until you die. And I suggest you make the move. Sounds a lot more fun.” 

Thus, The Plan was born. 

~~~

It wasn’t just Gabriel’s argument that made Castiel so certain that The Plan needed to happen, right now -- there were also a series of logistical concerns that made this Christmas the perfect time. 

Firstly, Castiel was up for tenure within the year. He didn’t know if he’d get it or not -- he had a strong publication record, but a few people in the department seemed to hate him, and while he’d mostly had success in recruiting and mentoring his grad students, a few had ended up quitting. But regardless of if he got tenure or not, this was essentially his last opportunity to move universities. Once his research program really got going, it would just not be feasible, so if he wanted to live in the same city as a certain person who he may have had unrequited feelings for for twenty years, this was his last chance to make that happen.

Secondly, everyone else seemed to be settling down and moving on, and Castiel feared his window of possibility would close very soon. He had no idea why or how Dean Winchester could possibly still be single at the age of forty, but he figured that was subject to change at any moment. And it didn’t help that Sam was in a serious relationship, Charlie had a new girlfriend, Garth was married, Benny was married, even Jo had apparently met someone… the peer pressure was bound to get to Dean soon. Castiel needed to throw his name into the ring before he lost the chance to forever. 

And thirdly, for somewhat mysterious reasons, the Winchesters were planning a Christmas reunion of friends this year. The idea had been born the previous Christmas, when Dean had been alone in a random city, talking on the phone to Cas about how dumb it was that they were both alone, together, on this most festive day (Dean would never show it, but Castiel knew that he did actually try to celebrate Christmas every year, though not usually in the conventional way). Castiel had idly suggested getting together a group of everyone who didn’t have many blood relations anymore (a lot of their friends, sadly) to celebrate all together, and Dean had enthusiastically jumped on the idea. Castiel had watched throughout the year with mild surprise as various details kept coming together -- Bobby Singer said they could use his house, if they did all the cooking and cleaning, Charlie would be able to make it (her girlfriend’s family needed time to warm up to her), Jo could get time off from work, Gabriel, sadly, could make it… it really seemed to be happening. 

And as embarrassing as it would be to get rejected by Dean Winchester with all their old friends around, there simply wasn’t another good time to do it. It had been several years since they’d been in the same place for more than a week, anyways, and Cas knew from experience that trying to confess his feelings during a quick 4-hour catch up whenever Dean just so happened to be in Boston was always awkward, and tended to result in him uncomfortably bailing halfway through. The most recent time, he’d gotten so close -- he’d even said it. Dean had led him right there, and he’d still managed to chicken out. 

“I’m just kind of tired,” Dean had been saying, over their fifth beers in as many hours. “It was fun to be traveling all the time at one point -- sure beat everything else -- but, I don’t know, man, I feel like I never see you guys anymore. Sammy’s got this whole life, you’ve got this whole life, our friends are all settled down…” He trailed off. Castiel didn’t know what to say -- for nearly the entire time he’d known Dean, being a pilot had been his ideal job, and it had seemed like he really enjoyed it. He had overcome his fear of flying with the kind of aggressive bravado Castiel had come to associate with him, not just becoming a pilot, but becoming one of the hardest-working, most popular, charismatic pilots the airline had ever seen. Cas had flown with him once, and hearing the entire cabin laughing at his jokes had been a marvel to behold -- but then, what about Dean wasn’t a marvel? 

“I do miss living in the same city as you,” Cas blurted out. His tolerance was alarmingly low, and he found himself in one of those moods where there was nothing he wouldn’t say to get Dean to pay attention to him for a little while longer. 

“I miss it too,” Dean said easily. “God, the shit we got up to at KU…” 

“Don’t remind me,” Cas said. 

Dean chuckled a little, shaking his head. “I don’t know, man, sometimes I think I should try to do the white picket fence thing, settle down, be more like Sam… but that’s just not me. Don’t want to saddle someone else with my crap, you know?” 

“Dean,” Cas chided. “Not this again. You are _not_ a burden.” 

“Jeez, easy with the--”

“Were you going to say chick flick moments?” 

“ _No_ ,” Dean said, shooting him a glare. “I was going to say pep talk. Don’t need one. I know what I am, and it’s fine.”

“You are so frustrating sometimes,” Cas said. “I can’t believe you can’t see yourself the way everyone else sees you.” 

“Oh? How’s that?” Dean said, and Cas first thought he was being deliberately, mockingly flirtatious, but when he looked into his eyes, Dean seemed genuinely curious -- even a little sad, despite all the “it’s fine”s. 

“You…” Cas said, and found himself immediately choking on his words. “You are just… I’ve never met anyone like you. You’ve changed the course of my life completely… I mean, think of where I was when we met, and where I am now… I never knew how to have fun before I met you, I never knew how to… uh…” Even in his drunken state, Cas realized it would be a bad idea to say anything along the lines of ‘like men without hating myself.’ “I never knew how to forgive myself. Does that make sense?” he finished, knowing it absolutely didn’t. 

Dean shrugged. 

“It makes me sad that you don’t think you deserve what Sam has,” Cas said, determined to get his point across even if it killed him. “If you ask me, you deserve all that and more. I… I love you, Dean.” He realized what he’d just said, and felt immediate embarrassment. “I love all of you.” 

“All of… who?” Dean said. He looked a little confused. Was he freaking out? Cas was freaking out. Cas was going to repress this memory for all it was worth, he was never going to resurrect this memory, he was going to take back everything even slightly incriminating that he’d ever said about Dean, in fact, he would never say anything remotely nice about Dean Winchester ever again.

“Um, all of your family,” Cas said. His voice sounded weird, even to his own ears. 

“So… Sam?” Dean said. 

“And, uh, Bobby. And Charlie. And… Benny.” _Why_ had his brain let him say _Benny_ ? Much about this night was already a mystery to Cas, and he was still _living it_.

“Oh,” Dean said, nodding and sipping his beer. He didn’t seem to be freaking out. In fact, after they were done at the bar, he consented to crash at Castiel’s for the night instead of his motel, so clearly things were fine, right? Maybe Dean had magically failed to hear any of what Castiel had said.

Things seemed normal the next morning, and all the mornings after that, so Cas assumed that his half-baked confession at the bar had been forgotten, whether unintentionally or as a merciful favor. But it only took him a few days to regret that he hadn't just gone all the way with it. _Why_ couldn’t he have just pushed forward and gotten his feelings out there, once and for all? There would be no moving on until he told Dean, because until he told Dean, for-real-told him and not just coward-told him, he would still be harboring this stupid little flame of hope that maybe Dean felt the same way, and the stupid little flame wasn’t about to let him seriously pursue anyone else, not when Dean Winchester was still a whisper of a hint of an option. 

Rationally, Cas knew that people tended to display their feelings for others when they had them. People tended to ask out other people who they were attracted to, or, in Dean’s case, they tended to relentlessly hit on them at bars. Rationally, he knew that he was behaving like a middle schooler, reading into all of Dean’s eye contact and body language and innuendos like he sometimes did when he was being a little more hopeful than he should. But the irrational part of his brain would absolutely not give up the ghost until it had to. So he’d be telling Dean the truth at the Christmas reunion, for real this time, without chickening out, and he’d move on from there, easy as can be.

Never mind that Castiel had no idea how he’d even begin to move on from Dean Winchester. 

~~~

Castiel was supposed to be one of the first to arrive at Bobby's place, but due to an unfortunate flooding incident caused by one of his second years, as well as an overly harsh reviewer comment on a paper he was trying to get published ASAP, he ended up arriving in South Dakota on the 22nd instead of the 19th. This three day margin should not have meant that Castiel arrived at what felt like an active crime scene, except for the fact that it did. 

“Castiel! Hi! Great to see you! Have you seen a large green box anywhere?” Sam Winchester said as soon as Cas stepped through the front door. He had panic in his eyes, what looked like several decades worth of dust in his hair, and a handful of weapon-related paraphernalia in his hands. As Cas contemplated how to politely tell him that he had been in the house for less than a second and could not possibly have seen a large green box, a few miscellaneous bullets tumbled out of Sam’s hands and onto the floor. 

Bobby saved him from needing to reply by emerging from the study at that moment. “Sam here is a little panicked about getting the place ready for Jess,” he said, his tone making it clear that he thought very little of any girl who could possibly be put off by the way that the place currently looked. 

“Bobby, you can’t just have firearms in _every single drawer,_ ” Sam said. It was apparent that this wasn’t the first time this conversation had happened. “And some people are allergic to dust, you know. If you can’t clean it yourself, you should hire someone to come in every now and then.” 

“ _Hire someone to_ \--” Bobby began, and was thankfully cut off by Gabriel’s sudden appearance. 

“Hey, little bro,” Gabriel drawled. “Took you long enough to get here. Your presence has been requested in the upstairs bedrooms.” 

“Gabriel arrived last night,” Bobby said. From his deliberately neutral tone, Castiel inferred that Gabriel had not behaved himself at all in his absence. He tried to convey his apologies to Bobby through eye contact alone. 

“We’re cleaning out the upstairs bedrooms so we can fit everyone,” Sam said. “Gabriel has been helping.” 

Cas raised an eyebrow at that, wondering how Gabriel had been bribed into doing anything that could be described as “helping.” He followed Gabriel up the stairs, afraid of what he might be walking into, but before he could say anything, Gabriel spinned and steered him into a linen closet with a little more force than was probably required. 

“Listen,” he said. “Lover Boy and Charlie are cleaning out Charlie’s room as we speak. Your room is next on the list. I’ve been slowing their progress as much as possible so that you might be forced to sleep in the same room as Lover Boy, but I can only do so much. We need to up the ante here. Did you bring any of the sulfur-based chemicals that I requested?” 

“ _Gabriel_ , no,” Cas said. “First of all, it is not safe to travel on commercial airlines with pyrophoric chemicals. Second of all, we are _guests_ here. We need to be helpful, or else Bobby Singer will chase you out of the house with a shotgun, again. Do you want to spend Christmas hiding in one of Bobby’s old cars, or was once enough?” 

“I _am_ trying to help,” Gabriel said, with a tone of innocence. “I’m _helping_ you nut up at last. It’s taken way too long.”

“I know!” Cas snapped, before remembering that he was currently on the offensive here. “I have a plan, alright? Your role in the plan is to not cause a ruckus, and ideally not land anyone here in the emergency room.” 

“Is this plan you speak of actually good?” Gabriel said. "Because I have some notes that might really add a _special_ flavor that I'm guessing you're missing."

“The plan is fine as is,” Cas said, pretending that it consisted of something more than “get drunk and hope for the best.”

“I don’t know if I believe that,” Gabriel said. 

“You’ll have to trust me,” Cas said. “Now can you let me put these bags down?” 

They left the closet with only a minimal amount of dust on their clothes to show for it. Gabriel peeled off sullenly to terrorize someone else, leaving Cas to follow the sound of voices to the farthest bedroom door. 

“Just don’t know why Sam thinks _every_ room has to be clean,” Dean muttered. “It’s not like she’s going to look into every room in this house. If we’re lucky, she’ll only be exposed to the bare minimum.” 

“Well, this room is barely habitable right now,” Charlie said. “We should clean it, for my sake.” 

Cas poked his head in. Charlie noticed him immediately and ran in for a hug, squealing all the way. 

“Cas is here!” she said.

“I can see that,” Dean said dryly. “Hiya, Cas,” he said, giving Cas a quick hug. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said. 

“We’re cleaning so that Sam’s girlfriend isn’t scared away forever,” Charlie informed Cas in a cheerful tone. 

“So I’ve heard,” Cas said. 

“Here, you hold the trash bag,” Charlie said, offering it to him. “We can be more efficient if we just shovel crap into here at a more rapid pace.” 

As they finished removing the dust and dead spiders from the room Charlie would be claiming (and shoving the actual important things Bobby would yell at them for throwing away into the closet or under the bed), Castiel was filled in on the plan for the next few days. It appeared that Jessica, Sam’s girlfriend of a year, wanted to be with him on Christmas, but couldn’t be away from her family for the entire time. Therefore, she was arriving on Christmas Eve, giving them one more full day to get everything ready for her arrival. This, the 22nd, was reserved for removing and hiding as many concerning or incriminating items as possible. Tomorrow, the 23rd, would be for going into town, finishing Christmas shopping, and the purchasing and setting up of as many Christmas decorations as the house could realistically be expected to contain. Christmas Eve itself would be when Sam was scheduled to have a mental breakdown when the place inevitably still didn’t look half as nice as Jess’s parent’s house. 

“This seems like a lot of work for four people to do,” Cas observed. 

“Oh, Jo and Gabriel are helping too, so it’s actually six people,” Charlie said. “Bobby, not so much, but you can’t really blame him. He’s such a hoarder, I think this whole process is causing him physical pain.” 

“Gabriel cancels out Jo,” Dean realized. 

“Precisely,” Cas said. 

“No, he’s actually helping this time!” Charlie said. “You guys will see.”

And when they finished Charlie’s room and moved to Castiel’s, Cas was unnerved to find that Gabriel had, actually, cleaned almost the entire thing by himself. As he smiled proudly, Cas felt his shoulders tense up. This could not possibly be a good thing. 

The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind. The main bedrooms had been made habitable, but that didn’t mean that the entire downstairs _wasn’t_ alarmingly messy, despite Sam’s escalating ferver. Castiel spent over an hour scrubbing the kitchen floor, which had a layer of crust on it that Cas had never noticed until he’d been forced to contemplate how a stranger might view it. It was unpleasant, thankless work, made only slightly better by Dean’s company. He kept up a relentless stream of judgements about this “Jess” character, who he had met a few times and liked, but was now clearly not to be trusted if he needed to _scrub a floor_ to impress her. Cas could tell that affection was underneath his every complaint, though, so he guessed that Jess was probably as great as Sam was making her out to be, and worth the effort. 

When it got dark, Bobby revealed that he had at least been somewhat supportive of the cleaning efforts by presenting everyone with beer and burgers fresh off the grill. Everyone gathered tiredly around the now-shiny-clean dining room table. Cas made eye contact with Jo across the table and nodded hello -- apparently she had been here all along, but so deep into cleaning the basement that he hadn’t even noticed her. As they ate, Charlie and Dean entertained everyone with tales of the last time they had LARPed, when Dean was in Charlie’s city -- apparently Dean had taken a very public fall during a very key moment. Warm from the beer and the sudden company of so many friends after so many months spent alone in his one-bedroom apartment, Cas laughed along to the story, forgetting to notice when Gabriel mysteriously disappeared for a short while. 

As it got dark, the members of the party slowly peeled off to their respective rooms -- an exhausted Sam first, then Jo and Charlie, who were both slightly jetlagged, then Bobby, who took Gabriel down with him. 

“But I’m not tired, Bobby,” Gabriel said.

“Someone has to lock you in the panic room,” Bobby said grimly. 

Dean whistled appreciatively. “Taking no chances there, huh, Bobby,” he said. 

“Not after last time,” Bobby said, escorting a complaining Gabriel down to the basement. “Jo put a bed in there, you’ll love it.” 

Castiel might be more concerned at the idea of locking his brother up if he didn’t know that Gabriel had figured out a way out of the panic room years ago. 

“We should turn in, too,” Dean said. “Sam has a truly alarming amount of things planned for tomorrow.” 

“It’s nice that he cares so much,” Cas said. “This may be our most Christmas-y Christmas yet.” 

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Dean said, but there was excitement in his eyes. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Dean,” Cas said. 

“Absolutely,” Dean said. “You’re coming gift shopping with me, right? I’ll go insane if I have to be with the group all day. Before you got here it was even worse, if you can imagine.” 

“Of course I'll go with you,” Cas said. 

“Good,” Dean said. “Night, Cas.” 

“Goodnight, Dean,” Cas said, watching the door to Dean’s room close behind him. It was still early, so Cas guessed that Dean wouldn’t go to sleep for several hours yet.

He felt a sudden, somewhat unexpected pang for their years as roommates in college, when they slept in the same room every night, and Cas got to fall asleep knowing Dean was right there almost every night (barring the times he’d be out drinking, or with some hookup). Young Castiel had been in tumultuous denial about his feelings for Dean for nearly their entire undergraduate careers, but Current Castiel almost envied his younger self now, for his certainty that once they graduated college, his feelings for Dean would either magically disappear or come to light, resolving him of his Dean problem forever. To think he had once thought that Dean would just be a college-person in his life, one to think back on decades later but not one who would always occupy his thoughts so totally and completely. But embarrassingly, Dean had managed to become a life-person, while still not actually becoming _Castiel’s_ person. It really was pathetic that despite all the people Cas had attempted to date in his twenties (before he’d given up and lost the will to date anyone besides Dean), a man who he’d technically never even kissed was still the man that he thought of the most. 

Cas pushed open the door to his room, and was accosted by an alarming smell. He flipped on the aged light to see that the room, which had appeared so clean before, now had a heap of junk from the other rooms mysteriously piled onto the bed. Approaching the pile, Castiel noticed a dead mouse and what looked like the remnants of a stink bomb. 

Really, this was Castiel's mistake. He should never have believed that Gabriel would rely on _him_ for his supply of noxious chemicals. Gabriel always had backups. 

Castiel retrieved his pajama pants and old t-shirt before closing the door to the abomination. He changed awkwardly before sheepishly going to knock on Dean’s door (it wasn’t worth it to yell at Gabriel at this hour). 

“Come in!” Dean said. Cas pushed the door open and Dean’s eyes widened. “What happened?” 

“Gabriel happened,” Cas said. “Can I sleep in here?” 

“Only if you wash that smell off,” Dean said, riffling around in his bag for some soap. “Here,” he said, tossing his body wash to Cas. 

“Thank you,” Cas said. And when he finished showering and slid into bed next to Dean, out of spite for Gabriel, he refused to be affected by it at all. He pretended that Dean was Bobby Singer -- _not_ someone he would feel any type of way about sleeping next to -- and was pleased when he managed to fall asleep quickly and with minimal yearning. 

And if he woke up feeling flustered that what had begun as a sex dream about Dean had accidentally transformed into a sex nightmare about Bobby Singer, well, that was his cross to bear.


	2. December 23rd

The uncomfortably caved-in mattress and the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby coming from the downstairs speaker finally forced Castiel to wake up for real, after several hours of waking up and falling asleep again. Beside him, Dean was glaring towards the source of the sound. From the barely-there light coming from the window, Castiel deduced that it was still early. 

“Already?” he croaked. 

“The devil never sleeps, Cas,” Dean responded, swinging himself out of bed and padding over to the bathroom. Cas checked a clock and found that it was actually just past eight, though the clouds in the sky were still thick enough to mostly obscure the morning sun. 

Downstairs, Sam was buzzing around, attempting to cook for everyone while also handing out assignments and describing all that needed to get done during the day. Behind him, Jo was surreptitiously correcting his cooking mistakes, taking the bacon off the stove before it turned into a charred disaster and ensuring that filter paper wasn’t making it into the coffee.

“Dean and Charlie, you’re in charge of the tree,” Sam said. 

“Woah, hold up, I’m with Cas today,” Dean said. “We already had planned to go gift shopping together.” 

“Was this plan made during your cute little sleepover?” Gabriel said. It wasn’t his custom to get up before midday, but clearly the opportunities to bother Castiel were making the early start worth it in his eyes. 

“What would you know about that?” Dean accused. 

“Okay, fine, Dean and Cas, you can get the tree,” Sam said. “Then do your gift shopping _after_ bringing the tree back. We can decorate the tree tomorrow morning as a fun Christmas Eve activity!” 

“Normal people don’t decorate the tree _on_ Christmas Eve,” Jo said. “Nor do they wait until the 23rd to get the stupid tree in the first place.” 

“Jo, you and Charlie can get the garlands and the decorations,” Sam said. “Which leaves… uh….”

“Me and you,” Gabriel filled in cheerfully. Castiel could almost _see_ Gabriel’s old crush on Sam returning, and felt the familiar dread associated with any time Gabriel’s sex life became a topic of discussion. 

“We’ll get the food,” Sam said. 

“Ooh, I bet we’ll need a lot of whipped cream,” Gabriel said. “And chocolate sauce? Hey, how do you make a dirty girl scout again?” 

Charlie laughed nervously, clearly recalling the last time she’d been tricked into consuming one of Gabriel’s “cocktails”. 

“No dirty girl scouts,” Sam said. “Are we all clear on our assignments?” 

“Yes, sir!” Charlie said. Everyone else answered in less enthusiastic affirmatives. 

An hour later, Dean and Cas were ~~sliding~~ driving into town on a very icy road, arguing about their plan of attack. Dean was all for just pulling off to the side of the road and hacking down the first pine tree that they saw. Cas thought that most of the pines were much too tall, and probably illegal to cut down, anyways. 

“Back in my day, it was just a man, his saw, and a random tree,” Dean grumbled. 

“We’re the _same age_ ,” Cas said. 

“All the same,” Dean said. 

Cas won the battle when they made it all the way into town without finding a decent tree to chop down, so they pulled into the local Christmas tree lot. Cas had been there many years prior, and remembered it as a very festive and well stocked place, but it was obvious that this year, they had come a little too late to get the best options. Dean quickly became enthusiastic about the mission anyways. 

“Hey, Cas, look, they have free popcorn,” he said, taking off for the popcorn machine immediately. 

“Do you think Sam wants a Douglas Fir, or a Noble?” Cas called after him. 

“Douglas Firs have the best smell,” said Alfie, the sales associate that had immediately identified them as Two People Who Might Need Help and attached himself by Cas’s side. “But the Nobles tend to be taller.” 

“Better smell or taller, Dean?” Cas called. 

“Probably better smell,” Dean said. “Bobby’s place hasn’t smelled good in decades. I know for a fact that Sam’s buying a metric shit-ton of candles, but they can only do so much.” 

They spent the next half hour in the nearly-empty tree lot, painstakingly smelling every remaining Douglas Fir. The top two ended up being a normal-looking one that Dean claimed smelled “only kind of good” and a tree with a slight crook in the top that was obviously emitting the best smell of any of the trees on the lot. 

“I’m telling you, it’s all about the smell,” Dean said. 

“Sam might burst an artery if our tree is visibly impaired,” Cas said. “What do you think, Alfie?” 

Alfie looked mildly terrified at being addressed. When he realized that they actually expected him to respond, he said, “The crooked one is marked down.”

“That’s it, then,” Dean crowed. “Crooked tree it is.” 

Cas was forced to concede, especially when he was cruelly reminded how expensive Christmas trees had become these days. For the past several years, he’d celebrated Christmas alone, not bothering with traveling to his family or purchasing a Christmas tree. The most recent year, feeling depressed by how un-cheerful his holidays always seemed to be, he’d bought one of those Norfolk pines all the hardware stores had this time of year, but it had only served to make him more grumpy about the holidays. Being locked into his little apartment with his dying Charlie Brown tree made him realize how empty he had voluntarily made his life, by continuing to work until the eleventh hour, never making time to see his friends, and never managing to have the courage to tell Dean he wanted things to change. 

What would life be like once he told Dean the truth? He’d have to move on, find someone else to do Christmas and life things with. The past years had taught him that loneliness wasn’t a good answer, anymore. But as he and Dean struggled to carry their tree to the Impala, having stubbornly refused Alfie’s help after paying, he couldn’t visualize a life with anyone besides Dean. Dean, who was currently trying to coordinate their efforts by singing an abridged (and somewhat dirty) version of “Jingle Bells.” 

“Dean, there are children around,” Castiel said, though his point was probably weakened by the fact that he was laughing along. 

“No there aren’t,” Dean said. “All the wholesome families already did this weeks ago. It’s just us degenerates, now. 2, 3, 4, _Jingle Balls, booty calls, always wait three days..._ ”

They got the tree attached onto the Impala with some minor angst from Dean (“It’s going to scratch the paint, Cas _,_ ”), and were back at Bobby’s before noon. To Dean’s chagrin, this was not late enough in the day for it to be feasible that they needed to get back to gift shopping right away, so they got roped into an hour-long affair in which at least five tree locations were tested, and a series of wires to straighten the crook in the top were attempted and quickly abandoned. 

“Great tree, guys,” Jo said sarcastically, viewing the now-more-obvious crook. 

“I think it has character,” Charlie said. 

“And it smells good enough to make the mothball smell just a little bit less bad,” Dean said. 

“That reminds me!” Sam said, and darted off to begin lighting all the candles that Dean had correctly predicted he had purchased. Looking at one enthusiastically burning candle called “Christmas Blessings”, Castiel had an unfortunate vision of Gabriel setting something in fire “on accident.” He wondered if Sam would notice if Cas moved all the candles to higher shelves. 

After a quick lunch break, during which Gabriel treated Cas to a headache-inducing account of all the ways in which Sam had gotten finer with age and was now more eligible than ever, Dean was gesturing Cas out of the house with a false sense of urgency that probably fooled no one but Sam. 

“How do you have so much shopping to do?” Jo said. “How many people do you even know?”

“Lots,” Dean said. 

“Ooh, can I come?” Charlie said. 

“No,” Gabriel said. “You have to stay.”

She looked offended, but Dean, who was already halfway out the door, didn’t appear to have heard her, so Cas just gave her an apologetic look and followed him out. 

In the car, Dean seemed to regain his enthusiasm for the day. 

“I was thinking we’d start by getting some alcohol,” he said. “Maybe even Christmas themed alcohol. Throw Sam a bone.”

“Sure,” Cas said, entertaining Dean’s delusion that all the Christmas cheer was only enjoyable to Sam. 

“How many presents do you need to get?” Dean said. “I already have Charlie’s, Sam’s, and yours. For Bobby I was just thinking of finding the most durable, boring flask possible.”

“You have a gift for me?” Cas said, unexpectedly touched. Dean had occasionally given him random gifts throughout the course of their acquaintance, but almost never an actual Christmas gift. Probably because they were almost never together on Christmas day. 

“Yeah, of course. Gotta make Christmas morning interesting, right?” Dean said. “Anyways, what do you think Jo would want? And am I supposed to get Jess something?” 

“I have no idea what Jo would want,” Cas said, suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of getting so many gifts. Incidentally, he’d already gotten Dean a gift, and Bobby as well since he was their host, but he hadn’t spent much time thinking of the others. He felt like an asshole for it now. 

“We should get some gift bags, so we don’t have to wrap them in anything. Wait, are you good at wrapping? I feel like you’d be good at wrapping,” Dean said. “Can you wrap my presents?”

“I don’t have any wrapping paper,” Cas realized suddenly. 

“We can get some,” Dean said cheerfully. The more tasks away from the house, the happier Dean seemed to be. Cas knew that despite his incredibly social nature, he sometimes needed time away, and being much more reclusive than Dean, Cas was more than happy to indulge him.

They decided to start at the mall, where a virtual mob of people were running around, evidently doing the same last-minute gift shopping Dean and Cas were attempting. As they looked at a store with wrapping paraphernalia in the window, Cas watched a harried woman chasing her child around, and wondered if that was a better use of his holidays than his usual plans. He was supposed to have kids by now, right? But all evidence seemed to suggest that he would be a horrible father. Did he even want kids? Did Dean? 

That dangerous line of thinking led Cas to picture how _Dean_ would be as a dad, which was all kinds of inappropriate. Dean would probably be only slightly weirded out if he knew that Cas lusted after his body, but if Dean knew that Cas was so softly picturing him with _children_ , gently scolding them when they did something wrong, playing with them in the snow, teaching them how to change a tire on a car… he’d punch him. And Cas would deserve it. 

“Hey, how do you feel about this wrapping paper?” Dean said, holding up a golden, sparkly thing with a disgusted look on his face. Cas looked at it closer and noted that it said “Have a Blessed Christmas” over and over in a swirly cursive font, with cutesy stylized snowflakes scattered throughout. 

“I think it could be ironic,” Cas said, noting that it was the only tube of wrapping paper left in what had previously been a full bin. 

“I guess we’ll have to go that route, then,” Dean said. He insisted they pick up a few rolls of black ribbon to “balance it out,” then proudly paid for it, telling Cas he could get him back next year. First purchase done, they ventured back into the heart of the mall, getting jostled left and right by people in heavy coats with copious amounts of shopping bags. 

Cas quickly steered them to a bookstore, where he was lucky to find a perfect gift for Sam almost immediately. The book on ancient Meso-American civilizations really couldn’t have been for anyone else. 

“Hey, do you think Jo wants a book on the story of Led Zeppelin?” Dean said, coming up behind him. 

“Do _you_ want such a book?” Cas said. 

“Yes,” Dean said. “But would Jo?” 

“I’ll get it for you,” Cas said. “It’s your Christmas present.” 

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean said brightly. Cas figured it would be a good idea to throw him off the scent of what his real gift was, especially if things got awkward and Cas got too scared to follow through on giving the real gift. 

They left the bookstore thirty minutes later, with the books for Sam and Dean, as well as a calendar of cute animals Cas thought Charlie might like. 

Their next stop was a stand selling “hard hot chocolate,” which Cas would never have stopped at if he was alone, but which Dean refused to pass up. Never mind that it was still the middle of the day, and they had shopping to do -- they still had to get peppermint hot chocolate, with double shots. 

“Is this wise?” Cas said. “We have to drive home.” 

“It’ll hardly affect us,” Dean said. “I’m sure it’s barely alcoholic.”

Cas took a sip, and fought the urge to spit it back out. If it was “barely alcoholic,” then so was pure ethanol. 

An hour later, Dean and Cas were alarmingly tipsy inside a hardware/outdoor store. 

“How about this for Bobby?” Dean said, holding up a can of bear spray and giggling to himself. They had been doing this for a while -- seeing who could find the most absurd gift for the remaining people they needed gifts for. 

“He might actually find that useful,” Cas said. “That's a good idea. How about this water filter for Jo?” 

“Think more weapon-based,” Dean said wisely. “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I got Jess this camping chair?” 

It really wouldn’t be all that funny, but Cas found himself doubling over with laughter anyways. “I need to sit down,” he said, collapsing into the floor model of the camping chair. He collapsed a little too far, though, and found himself halfway on the ground. 

“Oh shit,” Dean said. “Run, we gotta run.” 

They fled the store, but not before getting the bear spray for Bobby, an intricate (and expensive) Swiss army knife for Jo that they decided to offer as a joint gift, and an orchid for Jess. 

“Is that everyone?” Dean said, taking stock of their haul. 

“Well, you’ve forgotten Gabriel, but as he is currently attempting to seduce your brother, I feel that you might be off the hook for that one,” Cas said. 

“Again?” Dean said. 

“Regrettably,” Cas said. 

“Even though Sam has a girlfriend now?” Dean said. 

“Alarmingly, that probably only sweetens the deal for him.” 

Dean considered that, then appeared to get an idea. 

“Cas,” he said seriously. “Your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- is to help me find the ugliest pair of socks in this mall to give to Gabriel. What do you say?” 

“I accept this mission,” Cas said solemnly. 

They began another lap of the mall, but ran out of stamina sooner than they’d hoped due to the large amount of bags they already had and the waning effects of the hard hot chocolate. Plus, it just seemed like it would be impossible to do better than the lumpy, puce-colored socks with deformed Santas on them that Dean found. The misshapen nature of the thread made Santa’s pipe look a little like a blunt, which added to their appeal. 

“They’re beautiful,” Dean said. “Should this be a joint gift as well?” 

“No,” Cas said. “I brought Gabriel one of the chemicals he requested, though I mailed it to his home address so as to not endanger any of us. If Gabriel dies from trying to create a stink bomb out of triethyl phosphine, it should be on his own watch.” 

“Incredible,” Dean said, looking at him with awe. 

“Yes, after forty years, I might be finally beginning to learn how to handle Gabriel,” Cas said, and immediately felt like he may have jinxed himself. 

With a final stop to pick up every vaguely Christmas-related alcoholic item in the local grocery store, they were finally headed out of the mall and back out to Bobby’s. Christmas music trickled cheerily through the speakers of Dean’s car (supposedly Sam’s doing, but Cas noticed that Dean hadn’t bothered to change the station) as they carefully navigated the icy roads. Judging from the clouds above and the weather reports, it was going to start snowing very soon, and Cas hoped to be home before then. 

They pulled up to the drive to see a concerned-looking Bobby Singer and a deeply frazzled Sam trying to hang up Christmas lights. Bobby was on the ground looking up as Sam tangled a large string of white lights atop a tall ladder.

“I got it, I got it,” Sam said, while making it worse. 

“Kid, I don’t know about this,” Bobby said. “No one will see the outside of the house, anyways.” 

“It’s the first impression!” Sam said. “It’s the first impression Jess will have of the house.”

“Take the stuff inside,” Dean said. “I’ll help him with this.” 

“Are you sure?” Cas said. “It’s going to start snowing any minute.” 

“I’m sure,” Dean said. “The kid’s gonna kill himself up there if left to his own devices.” 

Cas didn’t need to hear another word of encouragement to take shelter from the cold, and bustled in with all the bags crammed on his arms. He rushed up to his and Dean’s room, hiding the bags from prying eyes as best as he could, and dumped them unceremoniously on the ground. He collapsed on the bed, eyes shutting, but didn’t lie there for more than five minutes before Jo was sent to collect him. 

“I’m told that the decorations won’t hang themselves,” she said dryly. “In fact, I was told that by your _brother_. When did he become such a bleeding heart, huh?” 

“He didn’t,” Cas said, forcing himself to sit up. 

He spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening following Gabriel at a distance, straightening all the haphazard garlands he was draping in places where people would _definitely_ trip over them, knock over a candle, and start a small fire. His brother’s ability to place things in just the right spot to cause the maximal amount of chaos never ceased to amaze. 

Despite the distressing fact that Gabriel, who was well over forty now and as much of an “adult” as he’d ever be, required supervision to put up decorations, Castiel thought that the place was actually starting to look pretty nice. In the chosen corner, Jo and Charlie were wrestling with the lights on the Christmas tree, and while it had seemed to be a difficult battle (Castiel noted that a roll of duct tape and a hammer had been required, for reasons unknown), it came out looking good and ready for ornaments tomorrow. There was enough garland to cover the entirety of the downstairs and all except the top tenth of the bannister on the stairs (Gabriel claimed that no one would notice, but it bothered Castiel), and that combined with the army of candles and assortment of antiquated angel decorations that Bobby had apparently had hidden somewhere made the whole place seem downright cheery. The illusion would be shattered if one decided to read the text on the new boxes of storage Sam had got for Bobby, with labels such as “Ammo” and “More ammo,” but one just had to hope that Jess would be overwhelmed by the festive atmosphere and not notice such details. 

“Oh wow, the garlands look great guys!” Charlie said, cheerily coming over to where Cas was assessing their progress. “Sam will be happy.” 

“Sam owes us so big for this,” Jo said, collapsing gracelessly to the floor. “This girl better be the freakin’ Queen of England, after all this effort.” 

“Don’t tell me you’re on Bobby’s side about this,” Charlie said. “The place was genuinely creepy. Like, I love Bobby, but holiday cheer is superior to dust and random papers everywhere.” 

“Holiday cheer like… that dead mouse stapled to the ceiling?” Jo said, gesturing to an obscene figure Cas had somehow missed. 

“Gabriel!” he said, going to pull it down. “Where are all of these even coming from?” 

“We didn’t have a mistletoe,” Gabriel said innocently. “Don’t you think it would be wrong not to have a mistletoe?”

Luckily, Dean, Sam, and Bobby came in before the argument could escalate. 

“Lights are up out there,” Dean said. 

“It looks great in here, guys,” Sam said, eyes lit up. He seemed more relaxed than he’d been in days, and Cas felt relieved that the dead mouse had been discovered before he came in. 

“We tried really hard,” Gabriel said smoothly, hiding the mouse behind his back and batting his eyelashes. 

“I’m ordering pizza,” Bobby said, with a tired sigh. 

~~~

Later that night, the younger constituents of the party (so, everyone except Bobby and Sam, who apparently had aged several decades from the stress of the week) were drunk and giggling on the floor, enjoying what had started as peppermint cocktails and morphed into straight whiskey as everyone stopped caring. 

“We should play a drinking game,” Gabriel suggested. 

“Drinking games are to get drunk,” Charlie slurred.

“So?” 

“I’m already drunk.”

“Amen, sister,” said Dean, who was lounging against a large cushion he’d pulled off the couch. 

“Okay, never have I ever, and you drink if you’ve done it,” Jo said. “I’ll start. Never have I ever cut off a guy’s toe during sex.” She took a drink, and started giggling so hard she spit most of it out. 

“No, you say things you _haven’t_ done,” Gabriel said. “Like, never have I ever had sex with Sam. Who here has had sex with Sam?” 

Everyone shook their heads with neutrality or disgust, depending. 

“Wait, Jo,” Cas said. “Did the guy consent to getting his toe cut off?” 

“What are you, the kink police?” Dean said. 

“Getting your toe cut off is _not_ a kink.” 

“It could be a kink.” 

“Never have I ever sucked a dick,” Charlie cut in. Everyone else drank. 

“Hey, I thought you were a prude, Cas,” Jo said. 

“Shut up, Jo,” Dean said. 

“We could play spin the bottle,” Gabriel said, winking at Cas, who began sweating a little. He had long since developed a Pavlovian panic response to Gabriel's winks.

“Why bother? Haven’t we all made out with each other?” Jo said. 

“You haven’t made out with everyone here,” Dean said. “Just me and… Charlie, right?”

Charlie nodded solemnly. 

“And Cas,” Jo said.

“She was dared to,” Cas said. 

“I was too,” Charlie said. “No offense, but I did not enjoy it.” 

“You made out with Cas, but not me?” Dean said, sounding only a little offended. “How was I not the token guy to make out with?” 

“Cas is pretty,” Charlie said with a shrug.

“Thank you,” Cas said. 

“Wow, sounds like you guys were crazy back in college,” Gabriel said, a little too casually. “So, you all made out with each other? Including… Cas and Dean?” 

“No,” Dean said. 

“Wait, how is that possible?” Jo said. “Didn’t you guys have to seven minutes in heaven once, or something?” 

“How delightfully middle school,” Gabriel said. 

“We did,” Cas said. “But we were interrupted.” 

“Not this again,” Dean said. “Don’t tell me you’re still offended.”

“Offended by what?” Gabriel said, looking like a cat who had just discovered a nest of baby birds. Then again, he often looked like a cat who had just discovered a nest of baby birds.

“Technically our lips have touched, so what if we not relive this story and just assume--”

“No abandoning,” Gabriel said. “The story just got good.” 

“Oh, look!” Charlie said. “It’s snowing.” 

It was dark out, but the Christmas lights provided enough light so that they could see the thick, fat snowflakes tumbling down to join the old snow already covering the ground. Finally, the snowy weather that was promised was being delivered. 

“We’ll have a white Christmas, mark my words,” Charlie said. "Just like in the movies."

“Hold up,” Dean said, sitting up all the way. “Cas, you thinking what I’m thinking?” 

“Oh no,” Cas said, realization dawning. “Oh noooo.” 

“Oh yes,” Dean said. “This is the first time in years the timing has been right. Let’s go.” 

“Where are they going?” Gabriel said. 

“Oh, they had a tradition in college,” Charlie said. “Whenever it’s snowing while they’re drunk, they go outside and roll around in the snow and behave like idiots. It’s very cute.”

“It’s not cute,” Cas said, who had several objections to the tradition, including the very real chance they might get hypothermia or lose appendages to frostbite. But one major benefit to the tradition was Dean’s presence in it -- that combined with the warmth from the whiskey motivated Cas to follow Dean out the door and into the snowy night, where it was eerily quiet and bright, from the lights and the almost-full moon. 

“Nice night for it,” said Dean, who had already plunged into a soft snowbank, where he was now lying, smiling contentedly. 

“Yes,” Cas said, all potential objections out the window in favor of observing the way the snowflakes looked when they got caught in Dean’s eyebrows and eyelashes. 

“Hey,” Dean said, smiling wider. “Catch.” 

A snowball came barreling at Cas so fast he couldn’t react, and got smacked right in the face. 

“Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to hit your face,” Dean said. “Are you okay?” 

“How dare you, Dean Winchester,” Cas said, turning away. 

“Seriously, does it hurt?” Dean said, crouching down. He was rewarded with a clumsily made snowball to the face. 

“Oh, it’s like that, huh?” Dean said. “Well, you’ll have to catch me first.” With a cry, he took off into the night, whooping and leaping unnecessarily. 

“Don’t go too far, Dean,” Cas said, but he was laughing, not too worried. 

They chased each other around like children for a while longer. Cas knew that Dean hadn’t had the opportunity to be a kid for very long, which was why Cas felt such joy whenever he saw Dean able to let loose like this. Some people who barely knew him wrote Dean off as immature, but Cas knew that wasn’t the case at all. He hid it, but Dean was more mature than most, and deserved to laugh like a child more than most, too. 

Eventually, the cold drove them back in. Everyone else had turned in already, so they shucked off their outer clothes in the entryway, hoping that they wouldn’t wake everyone up. They snuck upstairs, trying to be quick about it. Dean kept complaining that he was cold, and Cas kept pointing out that he had been the one to faceplant into the snow, and Dean kept saying that he had faceplanted knowing that he had a warm bed to return to and Cas should really not worry so much about being quiet and worry more about letting Dean return to said warm bed, and Cas finally relented and raced Dean up the stairs and into their bedroom. Neither of them wondered if the biohazard Gabriel had released into Cas’s room the previous night had dissipated yet. 

They got into their respective sides of the bed, but Dean rolled over to Cas’s side immediately. 

“Share warmth,” he muttered, his face already squished into the skin of Cas’s neck. 

“Your lips are so cold,” Cas said. 

“Give them time,” Dean said. “Once I leech all your warmth, they won’t be so cold.” 

“Oh, is that how it is,” Cas said, inserting his feet into the warm spot between Dean’s legs. 

“Totally fine,” Dean said, though Cas could feel him flinch reflexively. “I love having your icicle feet to keep me cool.”

“That’s what I thought,” Cas said smugly. And though he would have thought it would take years before he could possibly fall asleep in such a position, with Dean so close and Cas so cold, he still drifted off almost immediately.


	3. Christmas Eve

The incident in which Dean and Cas had technically touched lips had occurred during their college days. It had been a house party, one of Jo’s, and everyone had gotten drunker than usual since it was someone’s (Victor’s?) birthday. At the drunkest point in the night, there had been a game of spin the bottle crossed with seven minutes in heaven, in which the spinner had to spend a completely unsupervised length of time in a broom closet with the spinee. By the time it was Cas’s turn, Jo and Victor had already spent around twenty minutes in the closet, and Charlie and Benny, about one minute. Cas took the bottle with the hope that he wouldn’t get Benny. He hadn’t really realized that he was in love with Dean yet, so about that possibility, he was remarkably blasé. 

The bottle landed on Dean, because of course it did. Dean smiled mischievously and said something suggestive, something Cas didn’t remember because at the time of the saying, Cas was still somewhat scared of Dean and his blatant expression of his bisexuality, and tried to forget about any sexually charged moments the second they happened. Cas wasn’t in the closet, but he still kind of _thought_ he should be. He followed Dean, stiff and nervous despite his copious amount of drinks.

“Okay,” Cas said, once the door closed. “Should we do this?” He was swaying absently, and there was almost no light in the closet. It made the whole situation seem more illicit, and more inviting at the same time. Cas began to feel a little freer than usual. Who would know, or care, if he kissed this random, attractive friend of his, anyways? 

“Woah, buddy,” Dean said. “You seem pretty drunk.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” Cas said. “ _You_ seem pretty drunk.” 

“Do you actually want me to kiss you?” Dean said. Cas couldn’t read his tone. 

“Well, we have to,” Cas said. He was starting to feel as though he was saying all the wrong things. How had he walked into this closet so casually, only to feel such tension all of a sudden? 

“We don’t _have_ to,” Dean said. “I only kiss people who want to kiss me.” 

“Is that a rule?” Cas said, and laughed, for some reason. 

“It is a rule,” Dean said, laughing along, probably out of pity. “But most people do want to kiss me.”

“Cocky,” Cas said, reaching out to bop Dean on the nose. As soon as he did it, he wanted to vanish. _Why_ did he keep doing these regrettable things? 

But miraculously, Dean seemed to find it funny. He started laughing again, and Cas started laughing along with him. The tension was still there, but it had gotten friendlier. 

Cas had been alone with Dean a lot of times by this point -- they weren’t yet roommates, but they were still good friends. But none of those other times had been like this. None of the other times had seen them skirting around each other quite this obviously. Cas’s eyes adjusted to the dark enough to notice that Dean was closer than he’d realized, and staring right at him. Cas couldn’t help but stare right back. 

“Wait,” he said, realizing something important. “Do _you_ want to kiss me?” 

“Um,” Dean said, licking his lips. “I wouldn’t say no.”

“Okay,” Cas said, and then, for the first time in his life, he was leaning forward to kiss someone he was confident he actually _wanted_ to kiss. All the other times, it had been more of an experiment, or a way to be polite in the face of another’s advances, but now, Cas was initiating, and deep in the recesses of his brain, he had to wonder where this was coming from. Had he wanted to kiss Dean for a long time? What was it about this closet that made him want to kiss Dean? 

And then, just as Cas’s lips touched Dean’s, and he registered that Dean’s lips were about as soft and gentle as you might expect them to be, based on their appearance, and he started to wonder about other aspects of Dean, like what his hair would feel like in his hands and what his arms would feel like if he were in them, the door banged open. 

“Oh,” giggled Lisa. “Sorry. This isn’t the bathroom. Carry on.” 

She closed the door, but Dean awkwardly scratched the back of his head and backed away anyways, clearing his throat and opening the door again, with a “nothing to see here” expression on his face. He didn’t give Cas a second look, leaving Cas to scramble out after him. 

“Done already?” Charlie said. 

“Nothing happened,” Dean said, quick and defensive. 

And for years after that, nothing did.

~~~

On Christmas Eve, Cas woke up to see Dean staring right at him.

“Hey,” he said, his voice deep with morning grogginess. “Didn’t you once tell me it was creepy to watch people sleep?” 

“It is,” Dean said. “But you volunteered to wrap our presents, remember? I needed you to wake up so we could get it done before we decorate the tree.” 

“I did?” Cas said. 

“You did,” Dean said. 

“Okay,” Cas said, talking through a yawn. “I’ll wrap the presents, if you will be my wrapping assistant. I’ll need a cup of coffee, scissors, and some tape.” 

“On it, boss,” Dean said, rushing off downstairs. Cas wondered how he could be so chipper. It was only around eight in the morning, and Cas, for his part, was a little hungover. 

A quick trip to the bathroom later, Cas felt alert enough to at least do a passable job of wrapping the gifts. Dean returned right on time, with two steaming mugs of coffee and the needed supplies. 

“Do Bobby’s first,” Dean said. “He’ll care the least if the wrapping is fucked up.” 

“You start on the bows,” Cas said, wrestling with the horrible glittery wrapping paper they had been forced to buy. 

They worked mostly in silence, punctuated occasionally by Cas’s frustrations by the more oddly-shaped presents and Dean’s pride at some of the nicer looking bows. 

“That does look lovely,” Cas said, looking at Dean’s work. “Maybe you should have been the one to do the wrapping.” His own most recent attempt was looking more like a blob than anything else, with the _Have a Blessed Christmas_ twinkling mockingly at him.

“Nah, you did, uh, fine,” Dean said, taping his best bow to Cas’s gift to Sam. 

“You did wake me up at the crack of dawn for this,” Cas said. “This is not the time for quality work.” 

“Well, it’s the wrapping paper that counts, and ours is… Blessed,” Dean said. 

“Don’t remind me,” Cas said darkly. 

A half hour later, they had a pile of somewhat lumpy, golden presents. Cas surreptitiously added to the pile his original gift for Dean, which he’d wrapped back in Boston, and Dean shot him a look.

“You got me another present?” he said. 

“Well, in a way,” Cas said. “You’ll see.”

“Wow, Cas,” Dean said. “You’re a real gentleman.” 

“Stop it.” 

“No, seriously, I feel like we should take a turn around the garden together, or something. Like, you’re really sweeping me off my feet here.” 

“Didn’t we already do that last night?” 

“Ooh, he’s sassy.”

“You’re just now noticing?” 

Downstairs, the chaos with the tree was beginning in earnest, as enough people had woken up so as to cause a chain reaction, forcing everyone else to wake up as well. Sam in particular was sounding shrill enough to induce even Gabriel out of the panic room. 

“We have three hours before I have to get Jess from the airport,” Sam said. “Bobby, where is that star you said you had?” 

Cas and Dean trudged downstairs to lend their support.

“Merry Christmas Eve, guys,” Charlie said. 

"Merry Christmas Eve," Cas said.

“Are we putting presents under the tree yet?” Dean said. “Cause ours are _awesome_.”

“You may be overselling them,” Cas said. 

“After the ornaments,” Sam said. “Here, you guys take this box.” 

The collection of ornaments that they had to work with was a lovely combination of ancient, barely-together pieces from Bobby’s attic, simpler ones Sam had picked up from the store the prior day, and novelty ornaments Gabriel had snuck in somehow. 

“Sexy Santa deserves to go front and center,” he loudly declared, hanging up the shirtless Santa in perhaps the most visible spot on the entire tree.

“So does this eggplant,” Dean said. “Where did you get this one, Gabriel?” 

“Hey,” Bobby grumped. “That one is mine.” 

“I like your style, Bobby,” Gabriel said with a grin, directing Dean to place the eggplant in another prominent location. 

Cas took a more inoffensive approach, hanging up the plain orbs from Sam in such a way that would hopefully trick the eye into believing that there were more ornaments on the tree than there actually were. They really hadn’t gotten enough ornaments to cover the tree, but pointing this out to Sam seemed like a moot point, as he was currently coming up with increasingly unhinged suggestions for ways to cover the remaining space on the tree. 

“What about paper chains?” Sam said. “Charlie, you know how to make those, right?” 

“What paper would I use?” she said. “Bobby’s old newspaper articles?” 

“No chance in hell you're getting near those,” said Bobby.

“Or we could do that thing that they do in the old movies where they string up popcorn and hang it on the tree?”

“The ants would have a field day,” Jo said.

“Why not go for a minimalist tree?” Cas said. 

“This is a disaster,” Sam groaned. 

“Hey, no it isn’t,” Dean said, reaching out to give Sam an amicable pat on the back. “Look at this nice creepy angel ornament we got here. Isn’t that soothing?” 

“Very soothing,” Cas agreed. “Angels are watching over us.”

“Well, these are probably the weird, outcast angels, but yeah, reassuring sentiment all the same, isn’t it?” 

“I guess this is the best we can do,” Sam said with a groan, after twenty more minutes of hanging, rearranging, and attempts at creative solutions had passed. “Thanks for all your help guys, seriously. I think we’ve made it look really nice in here.” 

“Wait, the presents,” Dean said. “Cas, let’s go get them.” 

“Ooh, yes, I have some too,” Charlie said, running after them.

With the presents under the tree, the tree did look a little more complete, as long as one didn’t get close enough to see that Dean and Cas’s wrapping paper was upsettingly religious, Charlie’s wasn’t actually Christmas themed, and Gabriel’s was just a series of sinister looking brown bags. 

“So,” Bobby said, looking on the attempt at festivity. “Breakfast?”

~~~

Once Sam had left to make the long drive to the airport Jess was flying in to, the mood got significantly calmer. They did have plans to have a genuine, formal Christmas Eve dinner later on, but with the designated “stressed person” gone, it seemed a lot easier to just put off the cooking and preparations for the afternoon. So everyone was relaxing in various positions around the living room, paying differing degrees of attention to a sappy Hallmark movie that Charlie had put on. It was nice and peaceful, until Gabriel forcibly removed Castiel from the room to "confer". 

“But Gabe,” he said in protest. “How will I ever know if the brunette girl will forgive the blond man for not telling her he was secretly the prince of a small, vaguely European nation?” 

“I’ve seen this one, I’ll tell you the ending,” Gabriel said. “She forgives him, becomes a princess, and the blonde woman who was her rival ends up being exiled.” 

“Woah, spoilers,” Charlie muttered. 

“Come _on_ ,” Gabriel said. Castiel gave in and followed him, before anyone could ask any difficult questions. 

They headed to the panic room, which looked much the same as always, except for the Christmas lights someone had strung up across the top. Gabriel swung the iron door shut behind them with alarming strength. 

“ _So,_ ” he said. “I notice that the ‘plan’ isn’t really happening yet.”

“The plan wasn’t supposed to happen yet,” Cas said. 

“The plan _should_ happen today,” Gabriel said. “Have either of the Chuckle Brothers filled you in on what we’re doing tomorrow?” 

“On Christmas?” Cas frowned. “I had assumed we were just going to open presents.”

“And let Sammy’s girlfriend mistake us for _boring_ people?” Gabriel said with a snort. “Not on your life, kid.”

If Cas was honest with himself, he was just now realizing that he’d had a kind of half-baked idea of what Christmas day would be like, and it had involved sleeping in, lazily exchanging presents, and eating leftovers (ideally in bed) with a certain green-eyed friend of his. On such a day, it would have been so easy to find a random, quiet moment during which to get his confession out of the way in a minimally embarrassing way. But now he was recognizing the truth in Gabriel’s words -- Sam had made way too much of an effort on getting the house ready for a lazy Christmas to be in their future. 

“What is it, then?” Cas said, dread building. 

“Ooh boy,” Gabriel said, eyes glimmering mischievously. “We’re doing the whole thing, little bro. The whole Hallmark thing.” 

“What is the Hallmark thing?” Cas snapped. 

“What do they do at the end of Hallmark movies?” Gabriel said. He was enjoying this far too much.

“Kiss without tongue?” Cas said. 

“Well, that too,” Gabriel said. “But _before_ they kiss without tongue, they have… drumroll please… a _ball_.” 

“Why is there a ball happening in South Dakota?” Cas said. “The Hallmark movies with balls are usually in the rich, vaguely European countries. A ball makes no sense here.” 

“Well, we’re not calling it a ball, per se,” Gabriel conceded. “We’re calling it a holiday party with formal attire, music, and guests. Or something. But, you know. Similar end result.”

The “ball” was alarming enough, but Castiel detected another alarming word in Gabriel’s sentence that required explanation. 

“Guests?” 

“Guests,” Gabriel confirmed. “Bobby _does_ have friends, you know. And some of _our_ treasured friends from our collective pasts are apparently making the time to come to the party, isn’t that nice?”

“Which friends?” Cas said. 

Gabriel just smiled angelically. “Our beloved Dean-o sure has a lot of exes, doesn’t he?” 

~~~

Cas barely had time to despair about the influx of people he was apparently going to have to deal with tomorrow, due to a call from Sam. He had reached the airport and Jess’s plane was landing any second now (early by twenty minutes, how nice), and the news caused everyone to simultaneously panic about the fact that they hadn’t even started on cooking or getting ready. 

“What’s Christmas without a little stress?” Charlie said cheerfully. It was easy for her to put on a happy face -- she was by far the worst cook, so was in charge of the salad, which would probably take ten minutes, max, to put together. By contrast, Dean was in charge of the meat, which was a big enough job that Castiel had been assigned to be his assistant. 

“Last year at this time, I was drunk skiing in Utah,” Jo said longingly. 

“This is surely a cheerier use of your time,” Charlie said. 

“I guess,” Jo said. 

“Hey, did you know that _people_ are coming over tomorrow?” Cas muttered to Dean. Somehow everyone heard him.

“Yes,” several people said, in tones varying from pitying to condescending. 

“How did I not know about this until today?” Cas said. 

“Perhaps the powers that be thought you would flee the scene if you knew you had to socialize,” Jo said. She had clearly never forgiven him for being an awkward college student. 

“I can socialize,” Cas said. 

“Sure you can,” Dean said. “I’m sure you can also be nice to Benny, right?” 

“I’m always nice to Benny,” Cas said. Someone (Jo?) snorted with a little too much aggression. 

“Guys, is there something wrong with this romaine?” Charlie said, sniffing it. 

“There will be if you keep picking at it,” said Bobby, who was chopping mushrooms a ways away and clearly trying to mind his own business. 

“The romaine is fine,” Jo said. “You’re just paranoid because of those articles.” 

“Well, E. Coli is serious,” Charlie said. 

“Just don’t eat salads if you're worried,” Dean suggested. “That’s what I do.” 

“Same,” Gabriel said. 

“Why are we making this salad if no one will eat it?” Charlie said. 

“I’ll eat it just to spite you,” Jo said. 

“Hey Cas,” Dean said. “Not saying that I don’t know how to cook meat, because I do, and I don’t need a recipe or anything, but just in case, will you Google what the internal temperature of a prime rib is supposed to be?”

“Of course,” Cas said, gratefully escaping the room. He liked everyone there, he really did, but the knowledge that greater crowds were coming his way soon was making him stressed. It was almost too much to have the six other people they had now -- how much worse would it be tomorrow? If this was too many people for Castiel to comfortably talk to Dean, how much harder would it be when the entire house was crammed with other people? As he opened his laptop, Cas began to conceive a series of increasingly bad schemes to get Dean alone as soon as possible. He could fake an injury. He could lure Dean out of the room with the promise of alcohol. He could go outside and lie in the snow and get hypothermia, and then he’d either die or force Dean to come find him. Win-win. 

It felt wrong to ambush Dean with a confession right before they went to sleep, so that option was out. But if he did it before night, it would probably still be too awkward for them to sleep in the same room anyways, so he’d be stuck on the couch. That would just add insult to injury. Maybe he could do it right before everyone showed up for the party? Then there could be a distraction readily available, and the whole thing could pass peacefully. 

“Did you get that number?” Dean said, poking his head in. 

“One second,” Cas said. “You have grease on your forehead.” 

“Ah, thanks,” Dean said, wiping it away. “I don’t _need_ that number, exactly, but--”

“125 Fahrenheit,” Cas said. 

“I knew it,” Dean said. 

The rest of the afternoon passed better than expected -- Jo’s alcoholic eggnog helped Cas relax about the coming events a little, and Bobby’s skills in the kitchen helped smooth over the components that others were not so good at. The prime rib was looking good, thanks almost entirely to Dean and just a little to Cas.

Everyone eventually dispersed again to get dressed -- they were supposed to be “looking their best”, which hadn’t seemed like a big deal until Cas had received the news that at the party tomorrow they were supposed to somehow be looking even better. He hadn’t brought a suit or anything, but everyone else seemed to be prepared to dress to the nines, even Dean, who often took issue with this type of thing. 

“Can I come in, Cas?” Dean said, knocking at the door where Cas was currently changing. 

“Of course,” Cas said. “It’s your room.” 

“I wanted to make sure you were dressed,” Dean said, slipping in. 

“You’ve seen me shirtless before,” Cas said. 

“All the same,” Dean said. “Hey, need help with that tie?” 

Cas didn’t, but he nodded all the same. Was it wrong to enjoy this? Dean tied his tie quickly, with expert fingers, and met his eyes wordlessly. Cas had been planning to react in some way, but found himself familiarly unable to when faced with the full effect of Dean up close. Dean had certainly aged since they’d first met, fine lines forming around his eyes and his skin losing some of the freckles it had once had, but his eyes were the same as ever -- so green you could drown in them.

“Thanks,” Cas eventually forced out. 

“You look nice, Cas,” Dean said. He hadn’t stepped away yet, nor had he released Cas’s tie. 

“You look nice too,” Cas said. 

“I haven’t gotten dressed yet,” Dean said. 

Eye contact was finally broken as Cas looked Dean up and down. “Ah,” he said. He genuinely hadn’t noticed. 

“But thanks,” Dean said, shooting him a wink. 

It was already getting dark out. Where had the day gone? No way could Cas say his piece today. Admitting it allowed him to relax, just a little bit.

“I’ll let you get changed,” Cas said, forcing his face into an awkward smile. It didn’t seem to fool Dean. 

~~~

A few hours later, Castiel was thoroughly distracted from his earlier angst by much more eggnog and an angel named Jessica. Sam had been right -- she was perfect. She was a lawyer, like Sam, and had been explaining to Castiel the intricacies of patent law for the past half hour. Originally, there had been a whole group listening as well, but everyone had gotten bored away except for Bobby, who was snoring quietly in a nearby chair. 

“So then what happened?” Cas breathed. 

“Well, that’s when they finally decided they needed to bring in the big guns,” Jess said. “Aka, me. I realized that the _dumbasses_ had apparently been practicing law for like, one day, because they forgot two key things. One, a nearly identical invention was reported the previous year, by researchers at another university. In fact, these researchers had worked closely with my clients in the past, so there was truly no excuse for the oversight. Two--”

“Oh no,” Sam cut in. “Are we talking about law again?” 

Jess looked up, as if only now noticing that the room had emptied out. 

“They're playing what Gabriel describes as a ‘Christmas Eve drinking game’ in the kitchen,” Sam said, gesturing behind him. “I was sent to fetch you guys.” 

“Of course,” Jess said, getting up and smoothing her dress. “Sorry for boring you, Cas.”

“I’m not bored at all. What was the other key thing?” Cas called after her desperately. He got up to follow her, but found his way blocked by Sam. 

“Hey, I’m really glad you and Jess are getting along so well,” Sam said, looking a little too sappy for the occasion. 

“She is a very interesting person,” Cas said, unsure where this was going. 

“You know, I just wanted to say something,” Sam said. “I know we’ve known each other for a long time, and somehow I’ve never said this, but… you know I consider you like family, right?” 

“Uh,” Cas said. 

“You’re our family already, Cas,” Sam said, smiling reassuringly.

“That’s very kind, Sam,” Cas said. Was Sam family-zoning him on Dean’s behalf? How did Sam know that Cas needed to be family-zoned? Hadn’t Cas been subtle about his true feelings? Well, perhaps not…

“I approve,” Sam said, smiling again and nodding in some way Cas couldn’t hope to interpret. “Not that you need me to, but I do.” 

It seemed inappropriate to ask what Sam approved of, exactly, so Cas just stammered out a quick “thank you” and accepted a truly baffling hug. Being friends with Dean for so long, Cas had gotten better at understanding conversations, but this was making him feel like he was a college freshman again, with absolutely no clue what anyone around him was talking about. 

“Let’s go get smashed,” Sam said. 

The Christmas Eve drinking game Sam had referred to turned out to consist of Gabriel shouting out a random lyric to a Christmas song, and whoever came up with a sufficiently dirty way to finish the lyric got to pick a person to take a drink. It was a clumsily conceived game, but thanks to the general drunkenness of their company, Gabriel’s never-ending repertoire of Christmas songs, and Dean and Jess’s creativity, the game went smoothly, with Sam taking the vast majority of the drinks. They ended up calling it quits when Sam’s attempt to stand to get a glass of water ended with him on the ground, with drunk and cheerful “merry Christmas”s exchanged all around. Gabriel grabbed Castiel before he could complete his escape. 

“You didn’t do it,” Gabriel said. 

“The timing wasn’t right,” Cas said. 

“You _officially_ need my help,” Gabriel said. 

“Weren’t you already pretending to be helping?” Cas said. 

“No, but now I am. Get ready, kid. This is happening tomorrow. Your Christmas gift is your dear old brother getting you laid.” 

“I don’t need that Christmas gift.” 

“Everyone needs that Christmas gift.”

Castiel pulled his arm out of Gabriel’s gift. “I’m going to bed,” he said sternly. “And you are not going to interfere in my love life.”

“We’ll see about that, little brother,” Gabriel said, looking sinister. “We’ll see.” 


	4. Christmas

Dean and Castiel first met when they were both college sophomores. The scene of the crime had been a party that Charlie had forced Cas to attend. Charlie, being the age of regular college sophomores, was quite a few years younger than Cas, making him feel awkward, but her constant reassurances that her friends were normal and older and would love him finally induced Castiel to give in and leave his dorm on the Friday of the party. Once he got there, Castiel could tell he was in the right place by the sight of Charlie’s smiling face on the distant dance floor. That was the only thing that seemed right. Everything else seemed wrong. Cas hid by the far wall, alone, for quite a while before he was eventually noticed.

“Hiya,” someone finally said. Cas hadn’t seen them come up, his eyes fixed unseeingly on a distant point. “Who’re you?” 

“Castiel,” he said, turning to size up the stranger. The stranger was attractive, to be sure, with his oversized leather jacket and smooth baby face, but Cas barely clocked it. He could barely register anything beyond “party is scary and so are all the partygoers except Charlie.” 

“That’s an interesting name,” the stranger said. There was silence, in which Cas studied the stranger without the self-consciousness he had later learned to associate with the act. The stranger seemed a little off guard, but still met his eyes right back. 

“You haven’t ask my name,” the stranger said, after a long pause. “I’m Dean.” 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said. “What brings you to this party?” 

“I live here,” Dean said. “What brings you?” 

“Charlie,” Cas said. 

“Ah,” Dean said. “She did tell me she was bringing a hot guy from her class.” He winked, and Castiel felt his entire body heat up in an aggressive blush. The stranger looked alarmed at his response. “Hey, don’t freak out man, she’s a lesbian. She didn’t mean it like that.” 

“I wasn’t worried,” Cas said, though Dean’s latest sentence shocked him almost as much as hearing himself referred to as a “hot guy” had. He just wasn’t used to people being so open about being gay. Did Dean know that Cas was attracted to men, sometimes? Why did Cas feel like Dean was reading his mind? He couldn’t possibly be reading his mind. 

“Sure,” Dean said. “Listen, you want a drink?” 

“I don’t drink,” Cas said reflexively. 

“You sure you don’t want to start now?” Dean said. Cas wondered how it was possible that such an innocuous question managed to sound so flirtatious coming out of Dean’s mouth. 

“I’m sure,” Cas said unsurely. 

“Well, you just let me know if you change your mind,” Dean said, turning to leave. 

“I’ll do that,” Cas said to Dean's back, though he certainly would not be able to hear it over the noises of the party. Cas left the party a mere five minutes later.

By all logic, Cas should never have seen Dean again. The party had been a terrifying, failed experiment. He thanked Charlie for inviting him, but told her he would never attend another. He picked up a second on-campus job, and added another class to his schedule. The plan had always been to plow through college as quickly as possible, and Cas began to think he could get it done in under three years. He spent entire weekends in the library, going deep underground to the most quiet and dark floor. 

But despite his hermetic ways, he  _ did  _ somehow  see Dean again a few weeks later, standing outside the library. Cas saw him first, and resolved to ignore him. Dean saw him second, and had no such reservations. 

“Cas!” Dean called. “Castiel, hey!” 

“Dean,” Cas said. 

“Didn’t see you at any of our last few parties, bud,” Dean said, jogging away from the group of friends he was with to talk to Cas. “I’m a little offended.” 

“I don’t enjoy parties much,” Cas said. 

“Yeah, I could guess that,” Dean said. “How about lunch with friends, though? You cool with that?” 

“In an abstract sense, I suppose,” Cas said. 

“Great, we’re going to lunch right now. You’re coming,” Dean said, putting an amicable arm around Cas. “I’ll introduce you to everyone. You’ll love ‘em. And hey, Charlie’s meeting us there.” 

Overwhelmed, Cas considered wriggling out of Dean’s grip right then and there, but something within him told him to just go along with it. He was horrible at reading people’s tones, so he could be mistaken, but Dean did seem genuinely friendly, and not like he was mocking Cas and being nice to him as a joke. And if it did turn out to be a mockery, well, Cas was always looking to improve his right hook. 

But he wasn’t mocking Cas, and somehow Cas ended up meeting Dean’s friends that day, Jo and Victor and Benny and Charlie. And he somehow kept meeting them, and having a good time, until slowly but surely, he started to voluntarily attend their parties again. 

Cas didn’t talk much in that first year of friendship, but Dean didn’t seem to mind, happily talking Cas’s ear off whenever Cas was feeling quiet and listening carefully on the rare occasions when Cas wasn’t. Cas learned that Dean was different than Cas had first assumed. Dean was twenty-three, around Cas’s age, having also been forced to work before going to college (though Dean had joined the Navy, while Cas had worked at a gas station, a library, and a tutoring center). Dean had an absent father and a dead mother, like Cas, though while Cas had been allowed to withdraw into himself because of it, Dean had been forced to raise his little brother and act as both his mother and father. Dean was bisexual, like Cas, though he flaunted it where Cas hid it, constantly talking about his latest conquest, bragging about threesomes, and hitting on any attractive person who happened to come his way. It was really no wonder that Cas developed very confusing feelings towards Dean, who seemed sometimes like the better version of himself and other times, like another species entirely. 

By the time they graduated college, Cas had finally worked out that he had feelings for Dean beyond just friendship. He reacted to this revelation the same way most people might react to hearing that they had to get their pinky toe cut off -- with disappointment, but with confidence that once the chop happened, his life would move on. Once he stopped seeing Dean all the time, he’d get over him. 

But Dean surprised him, yet again. 

They had a graduation party, because of course they did. Dean cornered Cas after a genuinely alarming number of drinks. 

“You’re not disappearing on me,” he said, pointing a finger at Cas. He was as drunk as Cas had ever seen him, including the time Cas had been forced to drive Dean to the hospital in the precious Impala, with Dean incoherently babbling about the dangers to the upholstery and paint job the entire way. “You  _ will not  _ never return my phone calls again once we’re out of here, you hear me?” 

“Yes, I hear you,” Cas said. 

“I know you think… you don’t  _ matter _ to me,  or whatever. But I will not let you disappear from my life, you hear?” Dean subtly leaned against the wall. “I need you, Cas.” 

“I hear you, Dean,” Cas said solemnly, meeting his eyes, though he couldn’t understand what he was seeing in them. “I will not disappear.” 

And over a decade later, Castiel still keeps that promise. 

~~~

On Christmas morning, Castiel woke up first. It was snowing out, and the rest of the house was quiet. He suspected they were all sleeping off their hangovers, enjoying the time to be lazy before things kicked into high gear for the party. Cas was reluctant to ruin the silence, but he wanted Dean to wake up, so he gently prodded at his sleeping form with a single finger until he started groaning. 

“Why, Cas,” Dean said, throwing an arm over his eyes. 

“Snow, Dean,” Cas said. 

Dean removed the arm from his eyes. “Pretty,” he said. 

“We’re getting a white Christmas,” Cas said. “Charlie will be happy.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Dean said, visibly brightening. “Merry Christmas.” 

“Merry Christmas, Dean,” Cas said. 

“Do we go downstairs and wake everyone up?” Dean said. 

“I think we let them sleep for a little,” Cas said. “I’m planning to watch the snow.” 

“That’s a good plan,” Dean said, perching his head on Cas’s shoulder so he could watch, too. 

They stayed like that for a while, Dean nodding off a bit and letting his head drop further onto Cas’s shoulder. Cas didn’t mind the comforting weight, still enjoying watching each snowflake flutter down, for at least a half hour, until everyone else started to wake up. Cas didn’t want to leave the bed, where it was warm and quiet, but Charlie eventually came in to rouse them. 

“Merry Christmas guys!” she said, not batting an eye at the fact that they were nearly on top of each other. “Presents, come on!” 

“Give us a second, Charlie,” Dean said, rubbing his eyes. She nodded and closed the door. 

“I have something for you,” Dean said.

“I thought my present was downstairs,” Cas said. 

“Yeah, well,” Dean said, sounding a little awkward. “Maybe you can open that one later. When there aren’t so many people around.” 

“Good idea,” Cas said. “I have a private gift, as well.” 

“We’ll rendezvous later, then,” Dean said. “Go on, open this one now.” 

Cas noted that the present was wrapped beautifully. Dean should definitely have been in charge of wrapping their presents -- they would have looked much less like they were wrapped by a five year old. Cas tore carefully along the taped lines, not wanting to make a mess, and opened the box to reveal a sweater with what appeared to be a periodic table shaped like a Christmas tree on it, with elemental gold on top to boot. 

“Oh my,” Cas said. 

“Open it up all the way,” Dean said, reaching over to unfold the sweater and reveal that the bottom said  _ O Chemist-tree  _ in comic sans. “Get it, because you’re a chemist?” 

“It is so ugly,” Cas said, drawing Dean into a quick hug. “I love it.” 

“Put it on,” Dean said. “I have one of Sammy’s old sweaters. It’s not quite as ugly, but I think it’ll do.” 

“I should have gotten you an ugly sweater,” Cas said regretfully. “This is a great gift.” 

“Maybe next year,” Dean said with a wink. 

Their sweaters were, in fact, a big hit downstairs, where Charlie had already got everyone in gift-opening positions and was single-handedly passing the gifts out, as if it was about to be a race to see who could open the fastest. Cas had money on Gabriel. 

“I didn’t know you owned a sweater like that, Cas,” Gabriel said sweetly. 

“What did you get me that is shaped like this?” Jo asked, holding up the poorly-wrapped Swiss Army knife they’d gotten her. 

“Shut up about the wrapping job,” Dean said. “The inside is what matters.” 

With everyone downstairs, Charlie’s delusions that they might all open their presents in an orderly and adult-like fashion quickly died. All the presents were torn open within a half hour, leaving a massive pile of wrapping paper in their wake. Jo ran off in delight with her giant knife, confident that it had an appendage that could fix one of the leaky sinks, Sam quickly immersed himself in the stack of books he had received, and Gabriel proudly donned the ugly socks Dean had found for him and declared that he would be wearing them to the party tonight. 

“Speaking of, little bro,” he said to Cas, “Come on down to my abode. My present to you is there.” 

“I sent your present to your house,” Cas said, following Gabriel down to the panic room again. “Please be responsible with it. Soapy water should quench it, if things get out of hand.” 

“Things are never out of hand,” Gabriel said. “Anyways, I figured you wouldn’t have anything to wear to the party so…” He pulled out a garment bag, and unzipped it to reveal a dark blue suit. “Think it used to be Michael’s, but you’d look better in it, don’t you think?” 

“Gabriel,” Cas said, reaching out to touch it. It was softer and nicer quality than he was expecting. “Thank you.” From the looks of it, the suit was exactly his size. 

“I’m like your fairy godmother,” Gabriel said, with a smug grin. “Say it. Say you’re Cinderella and I’m your fairy godmother.”

“No, Gabriel,” Cas said. 

“Maybe you can wear that horrible tie Jo got you with your magic suit, from me, your fairy godmother,” Gabriel said. 

“Maybe not,” Cas said. 

They migrated back upstairs, where the Christmas cheer had moved to the kitchen. Everyone was chatting happily and heating up leftovers from the night before. For all that Sam had been worried that Jess was used to really formal Christmases, she sure seemed just as enthusiastic as anyone else at the prospect of eating half-cold steak for breakfast. 

“Thanks for the orchid, Cas,” she said. “For you, I’ll try to keep it alive.” 

“Water it once a week,” he suggested. “And keep it in that pot with holes in it so the roots can get some sun. They can photosynthesize, you know.”

“You don’t like the apron I got you?” Gabriel said to Bobby.

“I do,” Bobby said unconvincingly. 

“Then why aren’t you wearing it?” he said. 

“We’re just heating up leftovers,” Bobby grumbled. “It don’t seem like an apron is necessary.” 

“But to cook for the party tonight, it will be, right?” 

“We’ll see,” Bobby said, shoving the garment into a drawer. 

“Wow,” Jo said. “This is truly what Christmas is all about.” 

“ _ Wait _ !” Sam said, rushing out of the room and into the living room. Moments later, the Bing  Crosby CD he had been playing on repeat the past few days began again. “I can’t believe I forgot to turn it on until now!”

“Oh no, Christmas is ruined,” Jess teased. 

“I like Jess,” Charlie whispered loudly to Cas. 

~~~

Bobby, who may have otherwise seemed to be the member of the party most lacking in Christmas spirit, took the helm from Sam shortly after breakfast and became the drill sergeant they needed to get everything ready for the party. But even though he was shouting out orders and sending people running around as if they had no time at all and everything left to do, the preparations from the days prior had mostly held up, and they had everything ready quicker than expected. There was even time for everyone to take a Christmas Nap before guests started arriving at six, for people who chose to. 

Cas decided to hole up in a corner instead, reading a book Sam had given him on the social structure of honeybees. Passing by, Dean quietly dropped off a mug of peppermint tea, and Cas felt his heart grow three sizes bigger. 

He was so content in his reading corner that Cas nearly forgot about the incoming party attendees, until he heard the first knock at the door. Startled like a child caught in his pajamas, Cas shot up the stairs, where he walked in on Dean, who was straightening his tie. 

“You’re really cutting it down to the wire, huh, Cas,” Dean said, with a charming smile. 

“Shut up,” Cas said. “I need to change.” 

“You don’t want to exchange our other gifts first?” Dean said. 

“Oh,” Cas said. “Sure, but mine’s downstairs.” 

“I’m dressed,” Dean said. “The guests can wait. I’ll get it.” 

Cas nodded and retreated to the bathroom, where he tried to corral his hair into an acceptable shape. Charlie had been toting around a camera all day, and he knew that he was not about to escape the day without several commemorative photos. But unfortunately, no matter what he did, his hair refused to behave for the cameras. By the time Dean returned, Cas had already given up.

“Wow,” Dean said. “You made it messier.” 

“Shut up,” Cas grumbled. “You first or me?” 

“You,” Dean said, enthusiastically shoving a small, rectangular present at Cas. “Go on.” 

Cas shook it experimentally, trying to sus out its contents like a small child would. It was too small to be a book, and too thin to be some type of garment. Obvious guesses failing, he tore off the paper under Dean’s watchful eye. 

“It’s a mixtape,” Dean said, before Cas had the opportunity to ask any questions. “Has songs from college. And a few new ones I thought you’d like. You still have that MP3 player, right?” 

“I’d never get rid of it,” Cas said, turning the tape over with careful fingers. Sometimes in life, one received something that one just knew was going to become a holy, most prized possession. Looking at the tape, with “For Cas” written on it in Dean’s carefullest handwriting, Cas knew this was going to be one of those for him. He had a sudden vision of himself listening to the tape over and over while moping about Dean -- getting rejected by Dean, or if he chickened out entirely, just the generic living without Dean -- so he quickly changed the subject. “Thank you, Dean,” he said, stowing the mixtape in his pocket. “Now open yours.” 

Dean’s box was much larger. He tore the paper off, tossed it to the side, and carefully shimmied the lid off the box. 

“I know it’s weird that I had that,” Cas said, before Dean could say anything. “I don’t know how it got into my stuff. But I was cleaning out Michael’s attic earlier this year, and I found a few boxes of my college stuff that he still had. That was in it.”

“My dad’s leather jacket,” Dean said, pulling it out and running his fingers over it. 

“You used to wear it all the time,” Cas said. “For at least the entire first year I knew you.” 

“I did,” Dean said, cracking a small, sad smile. “I don’t know who I was trying to be. God, what a fucking poser. How’d you stand me?” His words were teasing, but he was clearly experiencing a wave of conflicting emotions. Castiel couldn’t tell if they were good or bad. 

“It looked good on you,” Cas said. “Better than that trenchcoat I always wore.” 

“That looked alright on you, too,” Dean said. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the leather coat, and Cas watched as he slipped his fingers into the pockets. They appeared to have things in them, but he didn’t take them out. 

“I’m sorry I kept it for so long,” Cas said. “It must have gotten mixed into my stuff when we moved out after graduation.” 

“Nah, I hid it there on purpose,” Dean said. “I was kind of fucked up after Dad finally died. Didn’t want to look at anything that reminded me of him.” 

“Ah,” Cas said. 

“I don’t feel that way any more,” Dean said. “Thank you, Cas. This… just, thank you.”    


“Of course,” Cas said. “I guess it’s good you didn’t just throw it away, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Dean said, returning the coat to its box with a heavy sigh and meeting Cas’s eyes. “I must have known what I was doing, deep down, when I gave it to you.” 

Cas just swallowed, not sure what to say to that. Dean was looking at him in earnest, and Cas was beginning to feel the same way he always used to in college, when he wasn’t used to Dean yet and just the mere act of eye contact with him was enough to reduce him to an incompetent pile of confusion and tension. He felt all that and more now, with the added years of companionship and vulnerability still somehow not letting him know what it all meant, but raising the stakes of whatever “it” was all the same. Was Dean moving closer? Cas couldn’t tell. He couldn’t possibly tear his eyes away from Dean’s. Perhaps  _ he  _ was the one moving closer -- that would certainly make sense, as Dean’s eyes apparently had sprouted magnets within that were perfect polar opposites to Cas’s. 

Heavy footsteps came down the hallway and stopped outside their door, breaking the silence. 

“Hey, Dean,” Sam called, causing Dean to look away at last, but not back up at all. He  _ had  _ gotten closer. “Do you have that tie you said I could borrow?” 

“Of course,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “One sec--”

Sam opened the door. “Oh, hi Cas. Sorry. Do you know that they’re trying to get a picture going downstairs, or--” 

“Yes, I know,” Cas said. “We’re a little behind.” 

“Oh,  _ we  _ are? Thought that was just you?” Dean said. 

“Shut up, Judas,” Cas said, taking his suit into the bathroom so he could change in peace. 

Ten minutes, and a few other early guests later, everyone was downstairs and attempting to gather around the tree. Cas felt a little disheveled, but Gabriel assured him through a series of gratuitous and highly inappropriate hand gestures that he still looked fine. 

“Just press the button on the top, Rufus,” Bobby said for the tenth time. His hair was slicked back and he was actually wearing a clean shirt, which seemed to make him uncomfortable. 

“I am pressing that button,” Rufus said. Behind him, a group of local children Cas had never seen were playing with one of the ancient angel decorations. 

“I didn’t know Bobby knew any of the families in town,” Charlie whispered to Cas, echoing what he had just been thinking. The doorbell rang again, as if to prove them even wronger. 

“I think Sam and Sheriff Jody took some liberties with the guest list,” Jo said. 

“Smile, guys,” Sam said. 

“The button isn’t working,” Rufus said. As he pressed it over and over, it randomly flashed once. 

“Hey, look at that, we got one,” Dean said. 

“I wasn’t ready,” Charlie said. 

“Let’s just use a phone,” Sam said, rushing over to hand over his phone to Rufus. Someone Cas didn’t recognize went to open the door, and a gaggle of people came in, chatting excitedly in their fancy clothes and sparkly jewelry, toting bottles of wine and desserts. 

“Three, two, one, smile,” Rufus said. “There, are we done?” 

“Yes,” said Bobby, who looked just as done with the group-picture experience as Rufus. 

“I’ll just get some candids throughout the night,” Charlie said, going to retrieve her camera from Rufus. The doorbell rang again. 

“We should just put a sign up that says ‘Come in,’” Dean said. 

“How many people are we expecting?” Cas said. 

“Lost count,” Dean said. 

“Oh my,” Cas said. 

“Well, it wouldn’t have been very Christmaslike to turn anyone away,” Sam said, putting a CD into the player. Cas realized, with some relief, that they were finally graduating from Bing Crosby to a Johnny Mathis one, which he counted as an upgrade. “And word started to get around that we were having a party, and, well…” 

“I see,” Cas said. 

“You know what?” Dean said. “It’s starting to seem like getting drunk is the best idea here.” 

“Is it bad if I agree with you?” Cas said, thinking back on all the alcohol he’d consumed in the short time he’d been at Bobby’s. At what point did that start becoming a problem? 

“Not bad at all,” Jo said, sliding into the conversation smoothly, holding a tray of candy cane martinis. 

“Where did those come from?” Dean said. 

“My big fat brain,” she said. “Alcoholic drinks are my greatest talent. Made a bunch beforehand, while you lazy asses were napping.” 

“Well,” Dean said, taking a glass and handing one to Cas, “I’ll drink to that.” 

~~~

Several hours later, there were at least fifty people crammed into Bobby’s house. It was definitely too many people for the space, and many were spilling into the cold outdoors (Bobby’s two ancient heat lamps were working hard), but Castiel wasn’t bothered. He was drunk and dancing in the living room with Charlie and Jess, as a weird electronic remix of We Wish You A Merry Christmas played on the speaker. 

“This is the best Christmas ever,” Jess said loudly. She reeked of candy cane martinis, but then, so did all of them. “My parents are always so prissy about Christmas. But this is so much more fun.” 

Charlie started laughing. “Your prissy parents were stressing Sam out so much,” she said, and looked like she wanted to say more, but her words were overcome by giggles. 

“To be fair,” Cas said. “It probably is a good thing that we at least corralled the firearms before your arrival.” 

Though the phrase wasn’t inherently funny, they all started laughing again anyways. 

“You know that Benny is here, Cas?” Charlie said. “His wife and kids wanted to go to the in-laws, and the in-laws _ still _ hate Benny, so he apparently decided to come out.” 

“Wow,” Cas said. 

“Who’s Benny?” Jess said. 

“Dean’s ex,” Charlie said. “He’s nice, except we have to sort of hate him, for Cas.” 

“Why for Cas?” Cas said. “I like Benny. Dean certainly likes him. They’re ‘brothers in arms,’ after all.” 

“You have to hate the ex just a little bit, Cas,” Jess said. “If you don’t, you’ll start to hate the ex  _ a lot,  _ and that’s when things get out of hand. Trust me.” 

“None of Sam’s exes are here, Jess, thank god,” Charlie said. 

“I don’t have to hate Dean’s exes,” Cas said. 

“Ok, fine, we get it, Non-Petty One,” Jess said. “You’re better than me. We understand.”

“Does she think I’m dating Dean?” Cas said to Charlie. 

“Are you not dating Dean?” said Kevin Tran, who Cas had not noticed come in. He was clutching a candy cane martini like everyone else, and though he was now obviously well into his thirties, it still looked wrong to Cas to see him openly drinking. As a sixteen year old college freshman, everyone else in the old friend group had been overly protective of him back in college, and Cas had found many times before that it was a hard habit to shake. 

“Why are you sleeping in the same room as Dean if you’re not dating Dean?” Charlie said. 

“Convenience?” Cas said. “Gabriel released a stink bomb into mine?” 

“I thought you had moved voluntarily,” Charlie said. She shrugged, and started jumping up and down and giggling when the song changed. The conversation threatened to move on, but Cas wasn’t done yet. 

“How long have you thought I was dating Dean?” Cas said. He was aware that he sounded more upset than he probably should, but for some reason he  _ was  _ upset. How did everyone else in the world apparently think he had what he wanted, when he had been living these past years so sadly without it? 

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I don’t usually talk about this stuff with you, and Dean is not super communicative. Just, from the way he’s talked about you for… years, I guess… I assumed that you guys had something going on. In fact, I was thinking I’d be getting a wedding invitation soon.” 

“A  _ what _ ?” 

“If it helps, I assumed you guys were dating since yesterday when I first met you,” Jess said. 

“Dean hasn’t dated anyone else in forever,” Charlie said. “I guess I thought he’d have a different person if not… you…” 

“Does Dean know that you guys aren’t dating?” Kevin said. He seemed serious, if not deeply intoxicated. 

“Yes,” Cas said, shrugging out of his suit jacket. “Excuse me.” 

He was sweating suddenly, for some reason. Aware that his reaction to the situation was unwarranted and probably exaggerated by the alcohol, he headed for the backyard, where a few people were still standing around and talking merrily, despite the continuously dropping temperature. The bitingly cold air and comparative quiet helped Cas calm down. 

So what if people assumed he was dating Dean? Dean would probably think it was funny if he heard. There was no reason for Cas to freak out -- if he didn’t freak out about it, Dean would probably also not freak out about it. In fact, they were both single, forty-year-old men, so it would almost be more concerning if they didn’t sometimes get mistaken for people who were dating. 

“Hey,” Gabriel said, appearing beside him somehow. From the redness in his eyes, Castiel had to infer he had found some weed somewhere. Only Gabriel could locate weed in rural South Dakota. 

“Hello,” Cas said. “What have you been up to?” 

“Not much,” Gabriel said. “Come inside with me.” 

“I just got here,” Cas said. 

“But you should still come inside,” Gabriel said. 

Cas sighed and let himself get pulled along, back to the dance floor. It seemed to have gotten even more crowded in his absence, though he’d only been gone for a moment. The song playing now appeared to be some kind of jig about the New Year’s, and Cas wondered if Christmas was officially over yet. 

“Cas!” Dean said, making a beeline across the room for him. “I heard I missed you by a minute.” 

“I’m back,” Cas said weakly. Somehow, Dean looked more beautiful than he had ever looked. How did he always do that? Was he… glowing, somehow? Or was Cas just drunk?

“Dance with me?” Dean said, reaching a hand out. 

Cas stepped into his space and reached out for his hand, but no sooner had he done that than Gabriel made a triumphant sound. Cas whipped around to look at him. 

“Mistletoe,” Gabriel said, pointing up. 

Cas and Dean looked up in tandem. Sure enough, there was an incriminating little bouquet of holly. Cas wondered idly if mistletoe was a real plant, or if any little bunch of green could count. Like so many things, mistletoe appeared to be a social construct, but not one he could get away with protesting now, or else everyone would probably attack him for being a nerd. 

“You know what that means,” Gabriel said. A few people who were near -- Jess, Kevin, Charlie -- perked up and started paying attention to the proceedings. 

Castiel laughed, involuntarily and nervously, and looked up at Dean. To his surprise, Dean seemed almost sober, all of a sudden, and kind of mad, all his attention focused on Gabriel. 

“This is a dirty trick, Gabriel,” Dean said. 

“It is?” Cas said, quietly. As tricks from Gabriel tended to go, this so far appeared to be one of the least dirty in his memory. 

“I thought we talked about this,” Dean said, stepping into Gabriel’s space. He seemed to abruptly realize that people were watching, and stalked angrily out of the room rather than say anything else. Someone -- Charlie? -- made a noise that sounded sympathetic. 

Cas registered that everyone was still looking at him with a mixture of pity and confusion. He figured he should probably be mad at someone, and decided, after some laborious firings of his drunken and confused synapses, that that person should be his brother. Just as he took his first step towards Gabriel, Bobby’s ancient grandfather clock loudly struck midnight. 

“Oh, Cinderella,” Gabriel said, spreading his arms in an appeasing motion. 

“Shut up, Gabriel,” Cas growled.

“I let you down,” Gabriel said, talking rapidly. “I’m sorry. But why don’t we talk about this?” 

“I think there’s been enough talking,” Cas said, swinging with all his anger and embarrassment at his brother. 


	5. December 26th

Castiel had perhaps achieved the lowest rock bottom he’d ever hit in his life. Not only had he managed to get publicly and obviously rejected by Dean Winchester without even having the courage to speak his truth first, he’d also been deemed a worse problem than Gabriel, as evidenced by the fact that _he_ was currently the one locked into the panic room. Nursing his bruised knuckles, Cas wondered if he would ever be able to fall asleep again, or if he should just ram his head into the door until he passed out. 

Luckily, he didn’t have to contemplate his limited options for long. A rustling at the lock told him that someone had come, either to rescue him or yell at him some more. Both options would at least distract him from the hellscape of negative thoughts raging in his brain. He groaned and pushed himself into a standing position, wondering if his full-body soreness was from the fight with Gabriel, the copious amounts of alcohol he’d drunk, or the sheer emotional damage of the evening. 

The door opened to reveal Gabriel, with Sam peering out from behind him. A rush of sound from the party upstairs accompanied them. Cas hoped that meant that at least _some_ people hadn’t noticed his little scene and were still having a good, regular time. 

“You gonna punch me again, little bro?” Gabriel said, though his tone was gentle. 

“I’m sorry for that,” Cas said. 

“Are you sorry for the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth punch?” Besides a bruise on the side of his cheek, Gabriel luckily didn’t look too much worse for the wear. Cas supposed that being drunk had made his hits fall a little flatter than usual. 

“Gabriel,” Sam said. “I thought you said you’d let me do most of the talking.” 

“Sure, sure,” Gabriel said, turning to leave. 

“Though,” Sam said, grabbing his sleeve, “wasn’t there just _one_ more thing you wanted to say?” 

“Oh, yes,” Gabriel said. “Castiel, can you please clear the panic room so that me and Sam can ‘talk’ without his ‘girlfriend’ hearing?”

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head. 

“Ugh, fine,” Gabriel said. “Castiel, I’m sorry for, quote, pushing you too far and not letting you work out your own problems in your own way, unquote. I should have, quote, given you space, unquote.”

“That's a shockingly sincere apology by your standards,” Cas said. “I forgive you, if you forgive me.” 

“Sure, whatever,” Gabriel said, turning to leave. This time, Sam let him go. 

Cas didn’t know what to say next, and unfortunately, Sam didn’t help him out, choosing instead to come all the way into the panic room and silently sit beside him. He gave Cas a reassuring pat of the shoulder, and that was it. 

“I feel like I’m a little kid who got sent to his room,” Cas finally said. Sam smiled. 

“Um,” Cas said. “Am I allowed to leave this room now, or…?” 

“You can leave,” Sam said. “I just thought it would be best if you understood better what happened up there.” 

“Okay,” Cas said. 

“You know,” Sam said, clearly gearing up for a whole thing, “the rest of us have known for a long time that you and Dean have a very, uh, profound, bond. I never fully understood it myself, though I can see it. But I guess that I assumed that because of whatever it is going on between you two, Dean was able to communicate his feelings to you. Especially since he’s not a twenty-five year old anymore.”

“Does Dean ever communicate his feelings to anyone, though?” Cas said bitterly, before realizing that this may not be the time to be complaining. 

“Sometimes,” Sam said. “He’s changed, Cas, he really has. He’s not trying to be our dad anymore. He’s kind, and he cares about people, and he’s not afraid to show it. He has all these friends of his own… he doesn’t even really have a permanent address, you know, but he still has more friends than me. I didn’t give him enough credit for so long, but the truth is, he’s a very emotionally intelligent person.”

“I know all that,” Cas said, staring at his hands. He knew what Dean was, probably even better than Sam did. It wasn’t what Dean _was_ that was the problem -- it was how he felt. Or rather, didn’t feel. 

“He’s emotionally intelligent, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still scared of some things,” Sam continued. “Like you.” 

“Me?” Cas said. 

“I don’t want to sit here and expose all his inner emotions,” Sam said. “Especially because I’m only guessing at a lot of them. But I think you don’t realize how much Dean feels he has to lose in you.” 

“Sam, you are speaking kind of confusingly lately,” Cas said. 

“Okay, I’ll keep it simple then,” Sam said. “You feel like you were rejected up there, right? Well I’m telling you, you weren’t.”

“I--”

“Just go find Dean,” Sam said. 

_Go find Dean,_ Cas mused, as Sam got up and walked away, leaving the door wide open behind him. Was that really such an option? He supposed it finally, kind of, was. He’d already experienced the rejection he’d been fearing for so long, so it was hard to imagine that anything else would be able to really hurt him. 

_Go find Dean_ , he thought, as he walked silently through the party. It had certainly died down some during his time in the panic room, but there was still a lively population of people who were dancing and talking. Many of them were his friends, friends he still wanted to talk to and catch up with, but he barely registered them at all, and they somehow seemed to barely register him. It was as though he was walking in a bubble, where the sounds and smells and lights of the party were muted and his mission was the only thing he could really see clearly. 

His feet led him mindlessly around the perimeter of the first floor. There was no sign of Dean anywhere. Cas was just about to go upstairs and check there when he saw a lone figure sitting outside, picking at the label on a beer bottle and wearing a woefully inadequate jacket. Cas went to the linen closet to grab a heavy, aged blanket and stepped outside to join him. 

Dean looked up when the door opened, letting in a cool _whoosh_ of air. It had gotten to be so cold that Cas’s eyes began watering immediately upon exposure to the night air, and he shivered compulsively. 

“How are you surviving out here?” Cas said, through chattering teeth. 

“It’s not so bad under the lamp,” Dean said. 

Cas walked over to join him, holding the blanket out as an offering. Dean shook his head, so Cas wrapped it around himself. The lamp did help some, but not enough. 

“Well,” Dean said, looking off at the snowbanks in the distance. “I guess you want to know what happened in there.” 

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Cas said. “But… you don’t have to tell me anything you don't want to.” 

Dean sighed and started picking at the beer label again. He looked tense. 

“Why don’t I start?” Cas said. “There were things I wanted to say to you, when I came here… things I never had the courage to say to you before…” 

Dean was quiet a moment longer. “Go on then,” he eventually said. 

“I came to Bobby's with this idea that I needed to tell you something,” Cas said. “But now --” 

“God. Just stop it,” Dean said, holding a hand up. He looked hurt. Cas couldn’t imagine why. “Can I at least say something first?”

Cas nodded in baffled encouragement. 

“Look, Cas,” Dean said. “I realize I’ve been an idiot for years, okay, but give me a chance to explain myself before you write me off forever, please. For as long as I knew you, I thought that you didn’t want to be with anyone, never wanted to date anyone… I mean, I know there was Meg, and Balthazar, but from the way you talked about them after the fact… I guess I assumed you had decided dating and sex and all of that wasn’t your thing. Which is fine. But _I’ve_ wanted to be with you for years, maybe decades, and I never even asked you if you wanted to be with me. And I realize it was fucked up of me to not even consult you, you know? I’m sorry.” 

“You want to be with me?” Cas said, his brain short-circuiting. 

“And I know it probably seemed rude that I didn’t kiss you under the stupid mistletoe,” Dean continued. “I know I should have just gone for the cheek or whatever. But Gabriel has been trying to force me to make some kind of move on you for the entire fucking time he’s been here, and I kept telling him I didn’t think you wanted that, but he wouldn’t listen --”

“I _do_ want that --” 

“And even if you did want that,” Dean said, finally turning to face Cas. “If you did want that, I told him that after nearly twenty fucking years I wasn’t about to have our first kiss be this awkward, forced moment in the middle of a bunch of other people. Not after we successfully dodged having it be in that gross-ass closet in college.” 

“I would have liked having it in the gross-ass closet,” Cas said. “Or anywhere, really. The back of your car. The panic room. The pits of hell.” 

“Fuck," Dean said. "So... it's true?" He was looking at Cas like he had just shown him the gates of heaven. “You really do feel the same way I do?” 

“I want to be with you, Dean,” Cas said. “I haven’t dated anyone seriously since I’ve known you not because I don’t want to date at all, but because I only want to date _you_.” 

“Oh,” Dean said, scooting closer. As if still afraid he might be slapped away, he reached out with one slow hand at a time, cupping Cas’s face in his hands. 

“Actually, I feel like I should say now, I love you, Dean,” Cas said. “‘Dating’ seems a rather flimsy term for what I want to do with you, and if that’s too forward of me, you may as well know about it now. I love you so much, Dean.” 

“And I you, Cas,” Dean said, his thumbs stroking Cas’s cheekbones. “Can I kiss you now?” 

Cas answered by leaning in, and finally, _finally,_ putting his lips to Dean’s, uninterrupted this time, fully able to appreciate every little sensation, every tiny motion Dean made, every little caress. It had been years since Cas had last bothered to kiss someone, and he couldn’t believe he had forgotten how it felt, how effortless it was to pull another close to him, how it made him almost want to cry, not of sadness, but of relief. It occurred to him after a few moments that perhaps he thought he had forgotten how it felt because he had never quite felt _this_ before. 

Eventually, shivering slightly, they pulled apart. Dean started laughing. 

“Why are you laughing?” Cas said. He couldn’t help but laugh a little too. Dean’s laugh was so infectious. 

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Dean said, darting in for another quick, sloppy kiss. “And you’re trying to tell me that you have, too?” 

“Yes, Dean,” Cas said, taking his hand. “A very long time.” 

“Ah, well, we figured it out eventually,” Dean said. 

“We’ll make up for the time we lost,” Cas said, meeting Dean’s eyes. His gaze was intense, filled with mischief and lust and a thousand things Cas couldn’t yet identify because Dean had never willfully showed them to him before. Cas felt something within him stir, and subconsciously licked his lips. 

“Who’s to say that time was lost?” Dean said. “Maybe it was just the world’s longest foreplay.” 

Dean leaned in again, and this time Cas climbed on top of Dean, his body moving of its own accord, wanting to be as near as possible to Dean, to melt into one being. Miraculously, Dean let him do it, touching him right back, leaning back into the nearby snowbank and making a gratuitous mess of things as snow got everywhere. The blanket got tangled around the both of them, hardly doing its job at keeping them warm. Eventually, that became a problem again. 

“We should go inside,” Dean said, pulling back just a little. “Would be a shame to get frostbite.” 

“Yes,” Cas said. “Let’s go to the warm bed.” 

They got to their feet, Cas reluctant to fully detach from Dean, savoring every spot in which their arms touched, and where their fingers were interlaced. 

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Dean said. “We should prank Gabriel by kissing under the mistletoe right now.” 

“You are a clever man, Dean Winchester,” Cas said. 

They walked through the remainder of the party like little children with a horribly disguised secret. A lot of people had left, but their friends were still in the living room for the most part, Gabriel having moved on to torturing Benny, Sam sitting next to Charlie and letting Jess sleep on his shoulder, Kevin Tran still dancing around like a hyperactive hamster. 

“Hey, Gabriel,” Dean called out. “Watch this.” 

He spun Cas around so quickly that Cas almost lost his balance, kissing him with an extravagant dip that left them both teetering slowly towards the floor. They fell into an undignified pile, but Dean was unshaken, looking up at Gabriel with a challenge in his eyes. 

“I see you two settled your differences,” Gabriel said. “All a part of my master plan.” 

“ _Master plan,_ ” Dean mocked. 

“Wait,” Kevin said. “Are they dating _now_?” 

“They’re dating now,” Cas confirmed. 

~~~

The next morning, Cas woke up to find that Dean was mostly on top of him. Despite the loss of feeling he was currently suffering in his left arm, Cas had to smile. He’d always suspected that Dean was a cuddler at heart, and now he had proof. 

“Hey,” Dean said, roused by Cas’s stirring. “Morning, Cas.”

“Good morning, Dean.”

Dean stretched, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. 

“All that stuff we said last night,” he said. “That was real, right? We really said all that?”

“Yes,” Cas said. 

“Thank god,” Dean said. “I don’t have to pretend I’m not in love with you anymore. That shit had gotten old.” 

“I feel similarly.” 

“So,” Dean said, rolling over and looking at Cas with a puppyish expression on his face, “What do we do now?” 

“You mean, after we get breakfast?” 

“Yeah, after that,” Dean said. “I’m supposed to leave Bobby’s tomorrow, and I guess my question is… where are you going? And am I invited?” 

“You’re invited everywhere, Dean,” Cas said, leftover nerves making him a little afraid to say his truth. “I meant it when I said that ‘dating’ didn’t feel like the right word for what I want. I will do whatever it takes so that we’re in the same city, if you'll let me. I can move… or you can move… whatever it takes for us to be together.” 

“Hey, don’t worry,” Dean said, pulling Cas into his side. “I feel the same way. My job is pretty flexible, so you don’t have to worry about moving. And I’m not gonna run.” 

Dean really did deserve more credit than Cas had been giving him lately. A part of Cas had still seen Dean the way he had been when they first met -- intimidating, cocky, overzealously committed to no commitment, and the type of person to always subscribe to arbitrary “rules” that would allow one to always keep one’s hookups at an arm's length. But Dean hadn’t been that way for a long time, it was obvious now. Dean had changed Cas, that had always been clear, but Dean had changed himself too. 

“Well then,” Cas said. “What are you doing New Year’s?” 

“You, hopefully,” Dean said. 

“Then you’ll need a plane ticket to Boston,” Cas said. “I hope you’re not tired of needlessly extravagant parties, either, because my attendance at the university’s New Year’s party is allegedly required.”

“Are you kidding?” Dean said. “Needlessly extravagant parties have huge potential for fun. Can I talk in a fancy accent the whole time? Can we engage in aggressive PDA and make the rest of your department jealous?”

“Of course,” Castiel said with a smile.

The future was looking better already. 

~~~

Downstairs in the panic room, money was changing hands. 

“I still can’t believe you won on a technicality,” Gabriel muttered.

“At least you were _kind of_ close,” Jo said. “Just an hour off.”

“Hey, your loss was entirely your fault for thinking they’d get it together sometime during the _summer_ ,” Gabriel said. “Imagine.”

“Come on, pay up Gabriel,” Sam said. “They did get together on the 26th, you can’t deny it.”

“I still think this should count as a win for me,” Gabriel said. 

“What should we bet on next?” Jo said. 

“How soon Cas forces Dean to get a cat?” Sam said. “Which last name they decide to take?”

“When they’ll get married?” Gabriel said.

“They might just decide not to get married,” Jo said. “Dean distrusts the government. I can’t see him wanting them involved in his life any more than they have to.”

“I’ll force them to,” Sam said. “For the tax breaks. And because weddings are fun.”

“Okay, what date are we guessing for the proposal, then?” Gabriel said. “Let’s do that one first.” 

It was quiet for a moment as they all contemplated. 

“Next Christmas,” they said at the same time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all there is, folks! A very happy holidays and a warm thank you to everyone who read this, hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> I've been shipping Dean/Cas since 2013 when I started watching Spn, but like a lot of people, had long since stopped keeping up until 15x18 aired. I'm glad I got this second opportunity to write Dean/Cas, since I was too scared to share any of my work back in 2013 :) 
> 
> A note: in my head, Cas is demisexual but theoretically could be attracted to any gender, which is why he identifies bisexual in this fic.


End file.
